Anyone following the JFK assassination dialogs will be aware that due to the actions of Representative Luna’s government oversight committee (after decades of abortive FOIA requests and legal challenges) we can finally see the contents of the Joannides Administrative file.

Of course, if you are seriously into this subject, you also know that does not equate to seeing the Special Affairs Staff/Miami Operating Base files related to his actual work activities nor the contents of the many months of his communications with the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE/AMSPELL) which he had been brought into SAS to take control of and manage. Those key files are reportedly missing in their entirety, as are Joannides reports on his ongoing work with the Student Directorate.

So, what have we learned from the administrative file itself. First, we have official confirmation that he used the alias ‘Howard’, – an alias which was not officially registered in CIA files but which was ‘backstopped’ with a false drivers license and possibly other items of identification sometimes referred to as ‘pocket litter.’  The fact alone verifies of what DRE Cuban leaders had been telling Jeff Morley for years – that their CIA contact was ‘Howard’.

Beyond that it confirms their remarks that they had been routinely reporting on their contacts with Oswald in the summer of 1963, as well as on a public propaganda campaign which they had launched against him. That raises a real issue in that none of that information shows up as being entered into the master DRE file at CIA headquarters, nor in Oswald 201 personality file. The fact that CIA Special Affairs Staff were compartmentalizing current Oswald information also showed up following his appearance at the Cuban and Soviet consulates/embassies in Mexico City.  When the CIA Mexico City station requested information on Oswald, they were advised the last file information was that he was in the Soviet Union but was reportedly being allowed to return to the United Staes – at the time that information was over a year old.

The level of internal CIA compartmentalization of Oswald’s contemporary 1963 activities – especially given his time in the Soviet Union, his marriage to a Soviet citizen and his highly public media appearances in New Orleans, advocating against American policy on Cuba and for the Castro regime – is striking.  We have extensive CIA files, widely shared, on individuals engaged in Cuba related activities who would have been of far less interest than Lee Harvey Oswald. The records anomaly is so obvious that CIA officers such as Jane Roman were forced to acknowledge that it suggests some sort of operational interest in Oswald was in play in the fall of 1963, apparently from within the Special Affairs Staff (Cuba Project group) headed by Desmond Fitzgerald. The anomalies in CIA information related to Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 are striking, ignoring them would be a form of denial.

Interestingly another item in Joannides administrative file also raises its own questions. In the late spring of 1963, he went through an additional security check for something beyond his routine duties as the DRE case officer. We do know of certain highly secret new projects initiated under being initiated within SAS at that time, projects dealing with a new Special Operations Group, reporting directly to Fitzgerald. Could that new assignment have brought Oswald into play as the subject of operational interest beyond the DRE propaganda activities?

Interesting, but the reality is that without the actual, missing, DRE report file, without Joannides own operational files, and without knowing the detail of the new project he was cleared to join, we will be left primarily with speculation. That is especially true if the interest in Oswald was ‘notional’ (hypothetical), a matter of following him and evaluating different possibilities for leveraging his activities.

Using Oswald for propaganda was easy enough, DRE had already started to do that by the end of summer. But his contacts with Cubans and Soviets in Mexico City may have offered something much more significant in terms of his potential. The Joannides file release resolved one critical question, confirming that the CIA was routinely receiving information on Oswald’s pro-Castro activities in the summer of 1963.  In doing so it confirmed that the gaps in CIA internal communications on information provided by the DRE was highly anomalous, suggestive of operational interest. Confirmation yes, clues yes, how far those clues might lead us is yet to be determined.

I had an extended discussion of this subject, along with some speculation of where the clues might lead us (including to David Phillips) in a recent show, which you will find here https://ochelli.com/