Tag: HSCA

Inside the CIA, JFK suspicions turned to James Angleton

William Colby, CIA
William Colby, CIA director 1973-75

A recent Daily Mail article on JFK’s assassination highlighted James Johnson’s new book, Murder Inc.: The CIA Under President John F. Kennedy which argues Cuba government may have been involved.

There are many reasons to doubt this conspiracy theory, which I detailed in this 2012 article for Salon. Those reasons still apply. But Johnson is right about one thing: The central role of James Angleton, CIA counterintelligence chief in obstructing the JFK investigation is highly suspicious. Those suspicions, in fact, reached the highest levels of the CIA itself.

The Sixth Floor Museum to hold assassination debate on October 29

Sixth Floor Museum
Home of the Sixth Floor Museum

In a welcome development, the Sixth Floor Museum is holding a debate about the causes of JFK’s assassination on October 29. Long reluctant to engage with critics of the official story, the Dallas museum is opening itself to new points of view.

I suspect curator Stephen Fagin is responsible. I did an oral history of my JFK journalism for the Museum, and I found him to be a perceptive questioner who was interested in different interpretations of November 22.

The two participants in the Oct 29 could not be more qualified to represent their views. …

Former chief JFK investigator on CIA obstruction

“I now no longer believe anything the Agency [CIA] told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity…. “

— G. Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in an addendum to the web page for the Frontline episode “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”.

‘Denied in Full’: JFK investigator identifies a key missing CIA file that remains secret

Dan Hardway
Dan Hardway, JFK whistleblower

Here’s a 40-year old JFK file that should, by law, be released by April 28, 2018.

On September 20, 1978 the CIA evaluated the work of George Joannides, then serving as the CIA’s liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

As HSCA investigator Dan Hardway (left)  explains in this sworn affidavit,  Joannides was stonewalling Congress’s JFK investigation at the time.

The release of this document would illuminate what the CIA thought of Joannides’ actions, which former HSCA counsel G. Robert Blakey has described as “obstruction of Congress.”

New JFK Files: CIA drags its feet on compliance, failing to release 12 documents

Tony Cuesta
Tony Cuesta, anti-Castro fighter with a JFK story

The National Archives’ long-awaited release of JFK assassination files, which began on Monday, has some holes in it.

At least 12 CIA documents that were supposed to be released online Monday are still in the possession of the Agency, according to the Archives.

Among the missing documents are ten pages of notes on the FBI/Army Intelligence file of Tony Cuesta, an anti-Castro militant who implicated a Cuban exile marksman in the assassination of JFK.

The CIA also retains a 47-page file on Cuesta, which is supposed to be released this year, according to the National Archives online database.

The omission of the Cuesta file and 11 other documents from this week’s release was inadvertent, according to archivist James Mathis.

In an email to JFK Facts, Mathis wrote.

JFK investigators file suit for CIA records on themselves

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Washington, D.C. federal court, Hardway, Lopez and Blakey say they filed a Freedom of Information Act request in May, requesting “201 files” or “soft files” on themselves.201s are a set of documents held by the U.S government on members of the government or military. The file usually contains information describing a person’s military and civilian education history, and can also include personal details like home records or records of awards the person has received.

Source: JFK Researchers Demand CIA Records on Themselves

JFK Most Wanted: Dave Phillips’ CIA operations files

David Phillips
David A. Phillips, chief of CIA anti-Castro covert operations in 1963

David Phillips was a failed actor turned expatriate newspaper publisher in Santiago, Chile when he was recruited into the CIA in the early 1950s. He made his mark fast. In 1955, he won a Distinguished Intelligence Medal, one of the agency’s highest honors, for mounting deceptive radio broadcasts in the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954.

After that his CIA career took off. With Howard Hunt, Phillips served as propaganda chief in the CIA’s failed effort to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs In April 1961. When he was assigned to Mexico City in 1962, station chief Win Scott described him as “the finest covert action officer I have ever met.”

After JFK’s assassination, Scott was not so complimentary and I suspect the reason why was Oswald’s curious handling of Oswald. .(I tell the story in my biography of Scott, Our Man in Mexico. Buy it here.)

JFK authors, investigators call for release of secret assassination files

jfk-2017-artA diverse group of JFK authors and investigators have called on the Obama and Trump administrations to order the CIA and other federal agencies to declassify all secret JFK files in their entirely by October 2017.

[Click Here for Open Letter on JFK Records]

The JFK records will pose an early test of the open government policies of Donald Trump. The president-elect has espoused the baseless and debunked conspiracy theory that the father of Senator Ted Cruz was somehow involved in JFK’s assassination.

Exclusive: JFK investigator on how CIA stonewalled Congress

Dan Hardway
Dan Hardway

In a new sworn declaration filed in federal court, former JFK investigator Dan Hardway tells the story of how the CIA stonewalled him and other investigators for the House Select Committee of Assassinations in 1978.

Hardway’s first-person story is the most vivid and powerful account of how the CIA obstructed Congress’s attempt to investigate JFK’s assassination in 1978 since Gaeton Fonzi’s book, The Last Investigation. Hardway adds new detail to the story Fonzi told by detailing the obstructionist tactics of George Joannides that he personally experienced.

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