CIA Refuses to Release Oswald Files

Forget the 9/11 truthers and the Obama "birthers"—the granddaddy of American conspiracy theories, the Kennedy assassination, lives on, thanks in part to a secretive CIA, which still refuses to release hundreds of documents pertaining to an agency-funded anti-Castro group known to have quarreled with Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. These particular files, being pursued by journalist Jefferson Morley, relate to CIA agent George Joannides, who was responsible for the anti-Castro group in 1963—and was 15 years later made liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassination. Morley’s work to bring the files to light has earned support from well-known individuals like John Tunheim, former chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, not to mention conspiracy skeptics like The Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner, who calls the agency’s reluctance to release the documents “a perfect example of why no one trusts the agency.” But maybe there’s reason not to: Joannides’s activities as case agent for the anti-Castro group that Oswald had attempted to infiltrate were never made known to members of the House Select Committee he liaised with. But, “if there really were a CIA plot, no documents would exist,” Posner says.