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

Tom Ozimek
Tom Ozimek
Reporter
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
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