Tom Jackman

Top 10 revelations from todays WaPo story on George Joannides: 1) Domestic spying was illegal in 1963. CIA did it anyway. 2) CIA lied to Warren Commission and HSCA about the existence of Howard Gebler. 3) CIA lied to ARRB about the existence of Howard, saying in a memo that there were no records for Howard Gebler. 4) The Joannides/Howard Gebler file WAS NOT part of the JFK records collection, which means CIA never turned it over to ARRB in the first place. 5) CIA gave Joannides a medal for excellent career service and expressly noted his time overseeing DRE and as HSCA liaison. (No, it’s not the whole point of the medal. But, yes, it is noted.) 6) Big one: Joannides’ progress reports for 17 months when he was at JM Wave working with DRE are missing! This would have valuable operational info. To @FredLitwin’s point, we cannot say Oswald’s name is not in the file if we don’t have all the records! 7) Howard Gebler (Joannides) primarily dealt with Luis Fernandez Rocha, the head of DRE. 8) 35 CIA employees handled records related to Oswald from 1959-1963, including 6 who worked for Angleton and Helms. 9) Rocha sent a tape of Oswald’s radio debate with Carlos Bringuier to Howard Gebler! 10) After 11/22/63, Howard told DRE to call news media contacts to tell them about Oswald’s ties to FPCC.