CIA Caught Lying About Lee Harvey Oswald Ties

Newly unearthed CIA documents undermine the agency’s longstanding claim that it had no knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s ties to Cuban dissident groups.

For decades, the CIA has insisted it was unaware of Oswald’s involvement with pro-Cuba organizations and denied any connection to such groups, according to The Washington Post. But records declassified in early July reveal a notable contradiction in that narrative — centered on one man in particular: George Joannides.

🚨The @washingtonpost with a history altering blockbuster — The CIA was LYING for 62 years about its pre JFK assassination knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Incredible reporting on George Joannides by @TomJackmanWP & work by @jeffersonmorley + @RepLuna👇🏼https://t.co/UGOsYYqgNl

— Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) July 14, 2025

Joannides, a decorated CIA officer, received a career commendation medal in 1981 for his work in a role called “deputy chief of the Psychological Warfare Branch.”

The latest batch of documents reveals he also worked undercover and received a Washington, D.C., license under the alias Howard Mark Gebler.

Further files declassified under President Donald Trump’s memorandum to release JFK files reveal Joannides, posing as Gebler, was in regular contact with the Miami-based Cuban dissident group Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, known as the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE).

He allegedly relayed instructions to the group’s leader, Luis Fernandez Rocha, according to former DRE member Jose Antonio Lanuza, recounted the detail to Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and longtime JFK conspiracy investigator.

JFK on A1.

I told Post editors in 1999 that Joannides was a front page story. They disagreed.

Today I won the argument. pic.twitter.com/qQHQcE27xK

— Jefferson Morley (@jeffersonmorley) July 15, 2025

At the same time period the group’s leader was in contact with Joannides, the anti-Fidel Castro DRE clashed with Oswald publicly over his involvement with the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Shortly after the clash, which occurred three months before Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald approached DRE and pitched himself as a mole within the pro-Castro group. (RELATED: JFK Files Reveal New Depths Of CIA Incompetence)

The CIA denied on three separate occasions that the “Howard” DRE members described to reporters even existed.

“This confirms much of what the public already speculated: that the CIA was lying to the American people, and that there was a cover-up,” Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who sits on the House Oversight Committee’s government task force on declassifying government secrets, told the Washington Post.

New federal secrets exposed as Republican unravels Lee Harvey Oswald’s hidden ties to CIAhttps://t.co/UzgKKBaO2I

— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) July 15, 2025

Beyond his direct role in funding and supporting the DRE, Joannides also went on to act as the CIA’s liaison to the House committee probing assassinations of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Members of the task force described a stonewalling campaign from Joannides.

“Joannides began to change the way file access was handled,” Dan Hardway, a staffer on the committee, testified in May.

“The obstruction of our efforts by Joannides escalated over the summer [of 1978]. … It was clear that CIA had begun to carefully review files before delivering them to us for review,” he testified to the declassification task force.

In 1994, when the Congressional Assassinations Records Review Board requested CIA documentation on Howard, CIA official J. Barry Harrelson wrote an official memo to the board denying the existence of Howard, according to the Washington Post.

Harrelson later admitted the memo was wrong, but claimed it was because Howard was not listed in the CIA’s registered aliases database, suggesting the nature of his work was clandestine even within the agency.

This, Luna told the Post, served as proof that “there was a rogue element that operated within the CIA, outside the purview of Congress and the federal government, that knowingly engaged in a cover-up of the JFK assassination.”