Declassified: CIA Psych Operative Contacted Oswald Before JFK Assassination
Newly released files show that a CIA psychological warfare specialist engaged with Lee Harvey Oswald under a covert identity months before the 1963 shooting
Twitter
Newly declassified documents released this week reveal that Lee Harvey Oswald - was in contact with a CIA psychological operations officer in the months leading up to the killing. The files detail a covert effort by the agency to obscure that relationship for decades.
The documents, part of an ongoing presidential transparency initiative, identify George Joannides, then deputy director of the CIA’s Miami station, as having assumed a false identity to contact Oswald. Using the alias "Howard Mark Gebler," Joannides operated undercover to liaise with anti-Castro Cuban activists funded by the CIA.
“Until now, the agency had denied Joannides ever used the name ‘Howard,’” reported Axios, referring to the CIA case officer believed to have coordinated activities with the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), a group that had multiple confrontations with Oswald in the summer of 1963.
CIA Link to Oswald Resurfaces
According to the documents, members of the DRE confronted Oswald on August 9, 1963, in New Orleans, as he handed out pro-Castro pamphlets. He later engaged in a public debate with DRE members, strengthening his public image as a communist sympathizer.
That narrative of Oswald as a Castro-aligned radical came just over a year after the Pentagon proposed the controversial Operation Northwoods plan: a false-flag scheme to justify war with Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the plan, which was drafted in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed CIA-led operation in 1961.
Cover-Up and Congressional Obstruction
The documents suggest that Joannides’ role was intentionally concealed from multiple congressional investigations over the decades. According to investigators, CIA officials deliberately delayed document requests, misled oversight bodies, and engaged in “covert action” designed to obscure Joannides’ activities from public scrutiny.
“All the records disclosed so far show how the CIA lied about financing or being involved with the DRE,” Axios noted, referring to past interactions with the Warren Commission (1964), the Church Committee (1975), the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977–78), and the Assassination Records Review Board (1990s).
What We Still Don’t Know
The revelation raises new questions about the CIA’s efforts to manipulate narratives and suppress its own role in the lead-up to one of the most consequential events in American history.
The disclosure was celebrated as a milestone in declassification efforts by Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chair of the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on Federal Secrets. Luna praised the release as a victory for government transparency and historical truth.
The released documents are part of a broader wave of JFK-era files ordered unsealed under President Trump's 2017 executive order, a move that aimed to finally bring clarity to decades of speculation and suspicion around the JFK assassination.