Jump to content

George Joannides

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Joannides
Joannides in 1963
Joannides in 1963
BornGeorge Efthyron Joannides
(1922-07-05)July 5, 1922
Athens, Greece
DiedMarch 9, 1990(1990-03-09) (aged 67)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
OccupationIntelligence officer, Lawyer
EducationCity College of New York
St. John's University School of Law, LL.B.

George Efthyron Joannides (July 5, 1922 – March 9, 1990) was a Central Intelligence Agency officer. In 1963, he was the chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the agency's JMWAVE station in Miami. In 1978, he was the agency's liaison to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Early life and education

[edit]

Joannides was born on July 5 1922, in Athens, Greece. His family immigrated to New York in 1923. He attended the City College of New York and St. John's University School of Law. Besides speaking English, he was fluent in Greek and French, and competent in Spanish.[1][2]

Career

[edit]

Before 1949, he worked for the Greek diasporic newspaper National Herald. From 1949 to 1950, he worked in the press office of the Greek Embassy in Washington. In 1950, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency.[2]

Joannides entered on duty as a GS-07 Contract Employee on 25 September 1950 and in January 1951 was sent to Athens as a case officer working for SR Division.[3] By 1955 he had risen to the GS-12 level.[3] In addition to Soviet operations, he engaged in others in the communist party, covert action, and local penetration fields.[3] He was converted to Staff Employee in August 1958.[3] Joannides remained in Athens another four years and became a recognized expert on Greek political affairs.[3] In 1959 he was made Deputy Chief of the Political Section of the Internal Operations Branch.[3] He was promoted to GS-13 the following year.[3] In 1962 Joannides returned to the United States and took on his first non-Greek operational assignment as Deputy Chief of the Psychological Warfare Branch of Task Force in Miami.[3] He was promoted to GS-14 in December of that year.[3]

By 1963, he was chief of the psychological warfare branch of Central Intelligence Agency's JMWAVE station in Miami under then-Deputy Director of Plans Richard "Dick" Helms,[3][4] with a staff of 24 and a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $15 million in 2024).[5][6] Joannides was charged with managing anti-Castro propaganda and the disruption of pro-Castro organizations.[7] In that role, he was also known as "Howard", "Mr. Howard", and "Walter Newby".[8][9]

Joannides directed and financed Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE), or Student Revolutionary Directorate, a group of Cuban exiles whose officers had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.[10][11][12] By some accounts, fashioned with the "plausible deniability" typical of CIA operations, the plan was designed to link Oswald to Castro's government, without disclosing the CIA's role.

Joannides returned to Athens in July 1964 as head of a ten-person branch engaged in Soviet and Cuban operations.[3] In 1965 he was shifted to head the Branch conducting internal Greek operations.[3] He was promoted to GS-15 in September 1968.[3] He remained in Athens until September 1969, when he was reassigned to Headquarters as Chief of the Greece Cyprus Desk.[3] This assignment lasted only six months, however, because he was hand-picked by the new Chief of Vietnam Station to head the Station's Political Operations Division.[3] When Vietnam Station was reorganized in March 1972, Joannides became Deputy Chief of the newly created Saigon Base until April 1973.[3] Joannides' next assignment was as Chief of the Covert Action Staff of Western Hemisphere Division.[3] In July 1974 he was transferred to the equivalent position in East Asia Division.[3] Joannides entered the supergrade ranks in April 1975 with his promotion to GS-16.[3]

On January 19, 1976 Joannides was selected to head CIA's East Asia Division's Operations Evaluation and Management Staff.[3] He continued this assignment until June 1978, when he was selected to assist the Agency's senior coordinator for work with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, an assignment he continued until his retirement in January 1979.[3] 

Reporter Jefferson Morley wrote: "The spy withheld information about his own actions in 1963 from the congressional investigators he was supposed to be assisting. It wasn't until 2001, 38 years after Kennedy's death, that Joannides' support for the Cuban exiles, who clashed with Oswald and monitored him, came to light."[13] G. Robert Blakey, the Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the HSCA, later said that Joannides "obstructed our investigation" and that if he had known about Joannides' Cuban operations he would have "demanded that the agency take him off the job" and "sat him down and interviewed him. Under oath."[14][15] According to Dan Hardway, an investigator for the HCSA, Joannides was running a "covert operation" to obstruct their investigation into the assassination.[16] Hardway says that when Joannides was brought in by the CIA, he limited their access to files and changed the process for file requests.[17]

Joannides retired from the CIA on January 12, 1979[3][18]. In July 1981 he was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal "for his more than 28 years of devoted and effective service to the Agency."[3]

In 1976, Joannides also started an immigration-law practice in Washington, DC.[1]

In 2013, John R. Tunheim and Thomas E. Samoluk wrote in the Boston Herald:

There is a body of documents that the CIA is still protecting, which should be released. Relying on inaccurate representations made by the CIA in the mid-1990s, the Review Board decided that records related to a deceased CIA agent named George Joannides were not relevant to the Kennedy assassination. Subsequent work by researchers, using other records that were released by the board, demonstrates that these records should be made public.[19]

In 2022, the Mary Ferrell Foundation filed a lawsuit in an attempt to secure the release of the Joannides files.[20] In 2025, government documents revealed that Joannides had contact with the organization Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), which confronted Oswald three months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The DRE themselves had claimed their CIA contact went by the name "Howard" and these documents revealed that Joannides did in fact go by the pseudonym "Howard".[21][16] Previously the CIA had denied to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations that such an individual existed, and in 1998 they told the Assassinations Records Review Board that "Howard" may have been “nothing more than a routing indicator”.[7]

Personal life and death

[edit]

Joannides and his wife Violet had three children, and lived in Pinecrest, Florida. In his later years, he had heart problems and moved to Houston, Texas to receive medical treatment from Michael DeBakey. He died on March 9, 1990, aged 67.[1]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Revelation 19.63 Miami New Times
  2. ^ a b Papadopoulos, Pavlos (February 22, 2023). "Τζορτζ Ιωαννίδης: Από τη δολοφονία Κένεντι, στα Ιουλιανά". Kathimerini (in Greek).
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Joannides Career Intelligence Medal Memo Official CIA Document
  4. ^ Morley, Jefferson (January 15, 2002). "What Jane Roman Said: Dick Helms' Man in Miami". www.history-matters.com.
  5. ^ Jefferson Morley, "What Jane Roman Said", Marquette University
  6. ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  7. ^ a b Jackman, Tom. "The CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald". The Washington Post.
  8. ^ Morley v. CIA. (2007). Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 06-5382
  9. ^ VIDEO: Withheld in Full: Episode 1 - Morley V. CIA, Mary Ferrell Foundation.
  10. ^ Scott Shane, The New York Times, 16 October 2009, C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery
  11. ^ "TILT and the "Phase Three" Story of Clare Boothe Luce (2012)". Archived from the original on 2013-11-03. Retrieved 2013-11-01.
  12. ^ Morley v. CIA. (2013). Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, case no.1:03-cv-02545, page 2.
  13. ^ Jefferson Morley, Salon, 17 December 2003, Celebrated authors demand that the CIA come clean on JFK assassination
  14. ^ Morley, Jefferson (12 April 2001). "Revelation 19.63". Miami New Times.
  15. ^ Vitello, Paul (11 September 2012). "Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator of Kennedy Assassination, Dies at 76". The New York Times.
  16. ^ a b Caputo, Marc (July 5, 2025). "CIA admits shadowy officer monitored Oswald before JFK assassination, new records reveal". Axios.
  17. ^ "Hearing Wrap Up: Task Force Examines Newly Released JFK Files". oversight.house.gov. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
  18. ^ Joannides Retirement Document Official CIA Document
  19. ^ Tunheim, John R.; Samoluk, Thomas E. (November 21, 2013). "Assassination questions remain". Boston Globe.
  20. ^ Caputo, Mark (22 October 2022). "'What are they hiding?': Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records". NBC News.
  21. ^ "CIA has spent decades saying it knew little of Oswald before he killed JFK. New docs show that isn't true". The Independent.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Kaiser, D. E. (2009). The road to Dallas: The assassination of John F. Kennedy. Boston: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674039289
  • Mellen, J. (2005). A farewell to justice. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books. ISBN 1597973548
  • Russell, D. (2003). The man who knew too much. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0786712422
  • Sabato, L. J. (2013). The Kennedy half-century: The presidency, assassination, and lasting legacy of John F. Kennedy. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 1620402807
  • Talbot, D. (2008). Brothers: The hidden history of the Kennedy years. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 1847395856
  • Waldron, L., and Hartmann, T. (2009). Ultimate sacrifice. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0786735112
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Joannides&oldid=1301712613"