Many JFK Files Still Withheld by CIA and Other Agencies

[Peter Lemkin]

Itis not a theory that the CIA is still keeping secrets about theassassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Itis a documented fact.
Hereis what is know about seven key JFK filescontaining more than3,000 pages of materialthat the CIA is keeping out of public viewon the 50th anniversary of JFK's death.
1)Files on the interrogation of Yuri Nosenko

Yuri Nosenko

YuriNosenko was an officer in the Soviet KGB who defected to the UnitedStates in April 1964, shortly after the assassination of JFK. Nosenkosaid that he had seen the files that the KGB compiled on accusedassassin Lee Harvey Oswald in his two and a half year residence inthe Soviet Union between 1959 and 1962. The Soviet intelligenceservice had not recruited or used him as an agent, Nosenko said.
DeputyCIA director Richard Helms told Chief Justice Earl Warren that hecould not vouch for the accuracy of Nosenko's claims exculpatingthe KGB. This left open the possibility that Nosenko was a falsedefector sent by the Soviet Union to obscure its role inbehind JFK'sassassination.
Accordingto the CIA's Web site,Helm said, "It did strike me at the time that it would be a greatmistake for the Warren Commission to shape its findings on the basisof a statement made by a man whose bona fides we could notestablish."
Yetwhat the CIA learned from its interrogation of Nosenko remains secret50 years later.
Accordingto the National Archives' onlineJFK data base, theCIA has 36 files on the interrogation of Nosenko, amounting to 2,224pages of material. None of these records have never been made public.
WasNosenko telling the truth? Or lying? The CIA doesn't want you toknow.
2)The files of William King Harvey,

Bill Harvey

BillHarvey was one of the most highly-regarded CIA officers of hisgeneration. One colleague describedhim as"a man without sentiment, considerable stamina, great determination[and] high-skilled" and "a gun nut." His contempt for PresidentJohn F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy was notdisguised.
Whenthe CIA wanted to create an organization capable of carrying outassassinations in 1960, they gave it the code name of ZR-RIFLE andput Harvey in charge.
WhenHarvey's CIA colleague JohnWhitten wasasked by investigators why Harvey might have told his wife to destroyhis papers after his death, Whitten replied, "Hewas too young to have assassinated McKinley and Lincoln.It could have been anything."
Accordingto the National Archives onlineJFK data base,the CIA retains a 123-page file of Harvey's operations.

David A. Phillips

3)David Atlee Phillips's operational files.
DavidPhillips was a trust fund kid from Fort Worth, Texas, who wasrecruited into the CIA in the 1950s and won a medal for his cleverwork in the CIA's overthrow of the government of Guatemala in 1954.With Howard Hunt, Phillips went on to play a leading role in theCIA's failed effort to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs In April1961.
Phillipshad an interesting role in the JFK story. Working undercover inMexico City in 1963, Phillips was involved in the pre-assassinationsurveillance of Oswald. There is also credible but uncorroboratedreport from a Cuban who worked with the CIA in 1963 who said he sawPhillips in the company of Oswald in Dallas in September 1963.
Phillipswent on to become the chief of CIA operations in Latin America. Uponhis retirement in 1975, he established himself as one of the mostprominent public defenders of the CIA. To defend the agency'sreputation, he founded an organization, the Associationof Foreign Intelligence Officers,which still exists today.
WhenCongress re-opened the JFK investigation in 1976, Phillips'sinconsistent, inaccurate, and evasive answers to questions aboutOswald, prompted JFKinvestigator Gaeton Fonzi toallege that Phillips was guilty of perjury in the case of themurdered president.
Phillipsdenied it but he did say late in life that he thought JFK was killedby unnamed "rogue" CIA officers.
Phillips,who died in 1987, was also man who knew how to arrange anassassination. In 1998, the non-profit NationalSecurity Archive obtainedand posted CIA documents showing that Phillips, at the direction ofCIA director Richard Helms and President Nixon, had worked withultra-right-wing Chilean military officers responsible foran assassination inOctober 1970.
Asearch of the onlineJFK database ofthe National Archives shows that the CIA retains four filescontaining 606 pages of material on Phillips,
4)The files of Anne Goodpasture

Anne Goodpasture

AnneGoodpasture was a career CIA officer who served in 1963 as the topaide to Winston Scott, the longtime chief of the agency's stationin Mexico City. She also worked closely with David Phillips.
Whenthe CIA's photo and audio surveillance monitors picked up on thecurious actions of a man identifying himself as "Lee Oswald" inSeptember and October 1963, the reports were sent to Goodpasture.Thus Goodpasture became acquainted with Oswald's political views,personal history and contacts seven weeks before JFK was killed.
Whenfirst questioned by JFK investigators in the 1970s, Goodpasturedenied that the Mexico City station had tapes of Oswald's phonecalls. She later changed her story and admitted,under oath, her role in disseminating the tapes after theassassination.
Accordingto the National Archives onlineJFK data base, theCIA has a 286-page file of Goodpasture's operational activitiesthat has never been made public.
5)Howard Hunt's operational files.

E. Howard Hunt

E.Howard Hunt was a career CIA officer known for his prolific prose andconservative politics. In 1961, he was a leader of the CIA's failedeffort to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Embittered by what heregarded as JFK's failure to support the invasion, Hunt wrote abook "Give Us This Day," which castigated JFK's Cuba policy as"shame-faced."
In1963 he worked at CIA headquarters in Washington. He was close toDavid Phillips.
Huntbecame famous in 1972 when he was arrested for running a burglaryteam breaking into the offices of the Democratic Party in theWatergate office complex in Washington. Hunt and the burglars werepaid and apparently directed by President Richard Nixon and hisaides. In the resulting scandal, Hunt all but blackmailed the CIA bythreatening to talk in court about what he described as "numeroushighly Illegal conspiracies" in which he had participated.
Laterin life Hunt made cryptic remarks about a possible CIA plot to killJFK in 1963 that he called "the Big Event." Hunt's comments canbe seen and heard on YouTube,Hunt was convicted burglar and a scoundrel so his testimony has to behandled with care.
WasHunt involved in a JFK conspiracy?
Thequestion cannot be answered definitively because the CIA retains sixfiles containing 332 pages of material on Hunt, according to theNational Archives' onlineJFK data base,
6)The files of David Sanchez Morales

David Morales

DavidMorales was a career CIA officer who served as the chief ofoperations at the CIA's Miami station in 1963 where he worked withDavid Phillips and Howard Hunt. He later served in Laos and Vietnamwhere he gained a reputation as a skillful and deadly soldier.
Inretirement, Morales did not often speak of his CIA exploits but whena friend referred to Kennedy's assassination, he reportedlysaid, "Wetook care of that son of a bitch, didn't we?"
Accordingto the National Archives' onlineJFK data base, theCIA has a 61-page file on Morales that has never been made public.
7)The files of George Joannidess.

George Joannides

In1963, Joannides, an undercover officer, worked for David Phillips andhe worked with David Morales. His job title was chief ofpsychological warfare operations at the CIA's Miami station; hisjob was running agents.
Joannideshandled the CIA's contacts with the Cuban Student Directorate, ananti-Castro exile group whose members tangled with Oswald in NewOrleans in the summer of 1963. The group, responsive to CIAdiscipline, publicized Oswald's pro-Castro ways before and afterJFK was killed.
Yet,as the NewYork Times reportedin 2009, theCIA did not tell the Warren Commission that the CIA, via Joannides,had a financial relationship with Oswald's anti-Castro antagonists.
WhenCongress reopened the JFK investigation in 1978, the CIA calledJoannides out of retirement to serve as liaison to investigators. Herevealed nothing about what he knew of contacts between Oswald andhis agents, which HSCA general counsel G. Robert Blakey saidconstituted obstruction of Congress. In 1981 Joannides received theAgency's Career Intelligence Medal. He died in 1990.
Inthe course of my lawsuitseeking Joannides's records,the CIA acknowledged that it retains more than 50 documents aboutJoannides's actions in 1963 and 1978 that it will not makepublicfor reasons of "national security."

Seealso:
"1,100JFK files ignored in Obama push to open records," (JFKFacts, May 14, 2013)