CIA Memo Links Covert Officer to Group Interacting With Oswald Before JFK Killing

A newly released memo confirms CIA officer George Joannides used the covert identity, Howard Gebler, while handling the anti-Castro group tied to Oswald.

Tom Ozimek

Published: 7/6/2025, 7:41:19 AM EDT

CIA Memo Links Covert Officer to Group Interacting With Oswald Before JFK Killing — Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, is pictured with Dallas police Sgt. Warren (R) and a fellow officer in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. (Dallas Police Department/Dallas Municipal Archives/University of North Texas via Reuters)

A newly released CIA memo reveals that George Joannides, an undercover officer specializing in psychological warfare, used the alias “Howard Gebler” while managing an exile group opposed to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The group also interacted with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963—contradicting decades of CIA denials about Joannides’s role in events leading up to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

For years, the CIA maintained that it had no ties to the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), an anti-communist group that clashed publicly with Oswald in 1963 and played a pivotal role in publicizing his pro-Castro sympathies after Kennedy’s slaying.

However, a CIA memo dated Jan. 17, 1963, released this week under the JFK Records Act, shows that Joannides was issued false identification under the name “Howard Gebler.” The memo notes that CIA’s Miami station, known as JM/WAVE, requested alias documentation for Joannides, including a fake driver’s license.

Former DRE members testified in the 1970s that their CIA contact in 1963 was known only as “Howard.” For decades, the agency denied knowing who “Howard” was or that any officer had been assigned to manage the DRE during that period.

Other declassified CIA personnel records, summarized in written testimony by former congressional investigator Dan Hardway, suggest that Joannides served as the agency’s case officer for the DRE, overseeing “all aspects of political action and psychological warfare” and controlling about $25,000 per month in covert funding for the group’s propaganda efforts.

“In 1978, I did not do any research into Joannides, or his activities in 1963, because, while working for the HSCA in 1977-1978, I was not informed that he had had any involvement with any aspect of the Kennedy case, and I had no basis to even suspect that he had,” said Hardway, who served as a staff investigator and researcher for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), focusing on potential CIA connections to Oswald and anti-Castro groups.

In his testimony, Hardway cited a sworn statement from Robert Blakey, the HSCA’s chief counsel, indicating that Joannides actively obstructed the committee’s work by withholding files and limiting investigators’ access to critical records related to anti-Castro operations and Oswald’s activities.

“Joannides lied to me about who he was and what he knew about the DRE and his role with it. CIA lied to me about knowing who Joannides was and what he knew about the DRE and his role in it. That, too, must be a part of this record,” Blakey’s statement says.

Another memo, dated March 20, 1981, and released on June 30, shows that Joannides was approved to receive the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal, citing his more than 28 years of service and praising his performance in various covert action roles, including his work with exile groups in Miami. The memo also notes that Joannides was rated “Outstanding” for his special assignment assisting the CIA’s coordinator in work with the HSCA, though it does not mention that, during this period, he did not disclose his earlier involvement with the DRE under the alias “Howard,” a fact that later drew criticism from congressional investigators and researchers.

The revelations were made as Congress renewed its scrutiny of the CIA’s handling of records related to Kennedy’s assassination.

Several weeks before the release of the new memo, the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held a hearing titled “The JFK Files: Assessing Over 60 Years of the Federal Government’s Obstruction, Obfuscation, and Deception.”

During the hearing, Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the Assassination Records Review Board, testified about the Joannides’s files.

“We had all been deliberately misled by the CIA as to the nature of the Joannides files that were there, and I think these files are likely still there, and can be released, and should be released,” he told lawmakers.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force, commented on the recent release of the CIA memos, saying that the documents revealed a “decades long secret.”

“Thank you to [CIA Director John Ratcliffe] for the transparency, without him this could not have been done, as well as the hard work of [Jefferson Morley],” she wrote in a post on social media.

“Thank you as well to @POTUS for your push for transparency, and all the staff who worked along side us at the archives, the CIA, and oversight,” Luna continued, referring to President Donald Trump’s order that the government disclose all documents under the JFK Records Act. “Today is a historical day for America and a step forward to help mend the broken bonds of trust between the US Gov and the American people.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the CIA for comment on the newly released records and on Joannides’s activities.

From The Epoch Times