Unfortunately, many of the documents on Morley's list will tell us little about the JFK assassination. About half of them are not currently in the JFK collection, and some of them just represent a fishing expedition.
Robert Reynolds, the top expert on the JFK Collection, was kind enough to help with this article, Let's go through Morley's list of document(s).
The George Joannides Personnel File
We've been through this a number of times. The George Joannides' personnel file was already examined by the ARRB in 1998.
Morley believes that this file will answer his question: "Did CIA launch an authorized operation targeting Lee Harvey Oswald in January 1963?" The ARRB was well aware that Joannides ran the DRE in Florida for a brief period, and they were also aware of his work as a liaison between the CIA and the HSCA. They released what they thought was relevant, and deemed the rest of his file as not assassination-related.
Arthur Schlesinger's Memo
Arthur Schlesinger's 1961 memo is largely unredacted and you can even read his conclusion in full. Morley believes that this file will answer his question: "What drove the mistrust between JFK and CIA that lasted throughout Kennedy’s presidency?"
As I have already written, we have a very good idea of what is in the redacted section in the memo.
James Angleton's Testimony
Now, let's get to Angleton's testimony before the Church Committee. The ARRB reviewed this document in 1998 and decided that large parts of it were not relevant to the JFK assassination.
Morley keeps changing the goalposts for this document. In the past, he has asked whether the redactions would answer whether Angleton was going against JFK's wishes and helping the Israelis go nuclear. Now, he is asking a completely different question: Did Angleton use foreign agents to surveil Oswald?
The last release of this document has relatively few redactions, and they do not pertain to Oswald.
CIA Ops Project
Jefferson Morley feels that this heavily-redacted document will answer this question: "How did the CIA surveil Oswald six weeks before JFK was killed?"
While this document is about surveillance operations in Mexico City, the newest material in the document dates from June 1963, and most of the document is from 1960. Thus it will not tell us anything specifically about Lee Harvey Oswald.
It's interesting that this is an instruction to erase tapes, which suggests that the erasure of the CIA station's Oswald tapes was not anomalous.
The CIA did not surveil Oswald -- he walked right into their surveillance operations in Mexico City.
AMWORLD Files
Morley wants to see the Operational and travel records for CIA officers Emilio Rodriquez, Anthony Sforza, and David Phillips. He feels this will answer his question: "what did these three undercover operatives know about Oswald during the summer and fall of 1963?"
Morley is not specific about which files he wants and which files still have redactions. A lot of AMWORLD material has already been released.
I am not sure which documents remain to be disclosed.
Paramilitary Name and Phone List
Morley claims this is a "redacted roster of top-secret, green-listed CIA paramilitary agents operating in the New Orleans area in the summer of 1963."
The redacted page is contained in the security file of Acelo Pedroso, a Cuban refugee who Garrison clamed was arrested by the FBI at an arms-cache raid on Lake Pontchartrain.
According to Robert Reynolds, however, "Pedroso's 201 file shows that the request for operational approval of Pedroso was made in March 1961 and included a "green list name check." This is when the 'roster' Morley cites originally dates from, not 1963. Moreover, as Pedroso's 201 file shows, in 1961 he was in Miami, not New Orleans. A 'green list name check' was a common part of the procedure for granting the 'operational approval' required for CIA paramilitary forces, agents, and assets, there are dozens of examples in the ARC. There is nothing particularly 'top secret' about it."
Robert Reynolds points out that due to an error in the ARC documentation, the real document is actually RIF #104-10122-10122. That document is fully open but is not online. Morley can get the document from NARA.
Miami Station’s JFK investigation
Jefferson Morley wants the supposed SIREPS (Situation Reports) related to queries put out by Donald Heath in 1964. He wants to know what the CIA internal investigation "found out about JFK’s assassination?"
Heath asked the field questions about possible Cuban and Cuban exile involvement in the JFK assassination. He wrote nothing about any of the reports he received back, and a lot of the reports might not have been in writing:
William K. Harvey Travel Records
William Harvey is a favorite target for conspiracy theorists and I have written about him a number of times:
Here is an excerpt from my book, A Heritage of Nonsense: (pages 297 - 298 in the Kindle edition)
Bill Harvey was an exceptional CIA officer with an exceptional drinking problem. He was key to the building of the CIA’s Berlin Tunnel, the unmasking of KGB spy Kim Philby, and was honored with the CIA’s Distinguished Service Medal. But you won’t hear any of that from the conspiracy nuts who think he killed JFK.
Harvey’s five-a-day martini problem had escalated after the Kennedys kicked him off of the Cuba Project assassination operation, and the CIA exiled him to Rome. It was the martinis that had likely loosened his lips when he told AG Robert Kennedy that he, Kennedy, was an amateur at covert operations (he was). The exchanges grew so ugly that it almost came to fisticuffs.
Over the years, I have interviewed over two dozen people who were close to Harvey, both as family and fellow CIA officers (e.g., CIA’s Anita Potocki, Mark Wyatt, Sam Halpern, David Murphy, Dick Helms, Ted Shackley, Dino Brugioni, etc., as well as spending two days in Indianapolis with his widow, CG Harvey, and other family members. CG kindly sent me a box of Bill’s papers.) I also interviewed friends and family of Harvey’s “son,” Johnny Rosselli, the patriotic mobster.
Here’s the skinny: Harvey despised RFK for his ego-maniacal and sloppy running of the sensitive Cuba ops. His colleagues at the Agency were in unanimous agreement on that (details in my books). But he was not a killer of anyone, let alone the President. He was in fact another patriot, one who believed that the Kennedys had bit off far more than they could chew (they had), and he worried that RFK’s ineptitude at espionage could start the nukes flying.
The sad irony is that Robert Kennedy ultimately came to agree with Harvey. About a month before his own assassination, he told Peace Corps executive/journalist Bill Moyers, “I have myself wondered at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba.” The great price was his brother Jack’s life.
He knew that his Cuba Project had not only infuriated the hard-drinking CIA man, but also propelled a violent pro-Cuba terrorist also named Harvey—Lee Harvey Oswald—into a murderous rampage that gained him the recognition he had long craved.
Morley is on a fishing expedition. There is no evidence that Harvey was involved in the JFK assassination, and we know where he was when JFK was murdered.
CIA File of Herminio Diaz Garcia
Some conspiracy theorists believe that Garcia was a grassy knoll assassin. I have discussed this in a few blog posts:
There is absolutely no evidence to tie Diaz to the assassination, except for some Cuban propaganda from Fabian Escalante who ran Cuban intelligence.
The file that Morley wants is not in the JFK collection, and I see no reason for it to be released.
The Original Nix Film
The original Orville Nix film has been missing for years. While I would certainly like to see the original film found and compensation paid to the Nix family, I don't think it will tell us more than existing analysis from copies of the film about the JFK assassination.
Carlos Marcello Tapes
Morley wants sealed surveillance tapes of Marcello when he was in prison in 1985. However, when Marcello "admitted" he killed JFK, he was most probably suffering from dementia. The files/tapes are outside of the JFK collection.
Infiltration of the Miami Media
Morley asks "who were the CIA’s two media spies in south Florida at the time of JFK’s assassination," in this document.
Well, they weren't really spies. All three AMCARBONs are identified (one ‘speculatively’) on the MFF site, and they were all Miami Herald journalists. AMCARBON-1 was Al Burt, AMCARBON-2 was probably Dom Bonafede, and AMCARBON-3 was Don Bohning,
Bohning is the author of the The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965, which I strongly recommend. Here is what he wrote about being a CIA contact:
I have never filed a Freedom of Information Act on myself, but subsequently have seen the declassified documents that identify me as Amcarbon3, whatever that means. As for being a CIA informant, I guess that if having lunch occasionally and exchanging news about the Cuban exile community that also qualifies me as an informant for the State Department, the Commerce Department, any other U.S. government agency that dealt with Cuba as well as various Latin American foreign ministers and other officials.
As far as I am concerned, none of my contacts with the CIA violated any journalist ethics, as did Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin’s close friend Tad Szulc of the New York Times certainly did by promoting a clandestine program – codenamed AMTRUNK - through the CIA and aimed at subverting Cuban military officers.
I am not sure how finally knowing that AMCARBON-2 was Dom Bonafede will help us understand the JFK assassination.
Jackie Kennedy Interviews
Jackie Kennedy wrote Lyndon Johnson five letters, and she was also interviewed (as well as Robert Kennedy) by William Manchester for his book, The Death of a President. Morley believes that both of them were skeptics of the Warren Commission, and so he wants to know what she told Manchester and LBJ.
Even if Jackie Kennedy did not believe the Warren Report, so what? She didn't possess any special knowledge, and she had lots of opportunity to tell the public what she supposedly knew. She never said a word.
Same holds for Robert Kennedy. I should add that Robert Kennedy never said a word to the Warren Commission about the plots to kill Fidel Castro.
That's the entire list of 13 documents and files that Jefferson Morley is most eager to see.
Only a few of them are currently in the JFK collection - like the Schlesinger memo and the Angleton testimony. The Schlesinger memo was written in 1961 and we already know quite a bit of what is in the redacted section. When it is eventually released, we will learn a little more about the relationship back then between the CIA and the State Department. The Angleton testimony might tell us a bit more about Israel.
Unless Donald Trump starts a new mini-ARRB I doubt we will see the other items.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Jefferson Morley
Morley claims I am a CIA apologist and then misquotes me.
It would be worthwhile for the CIA to release the Joannides file just to stop the incessant posts from Jefferson Morley.
Actually, Oswald stayed at two budget-priced hotels in Helsinki.
He keeps asking the same questions, and we keep posting the same answers.
Conspiracy authors are playing fast and loose with the facts.
There is no evidence that Diaz was involved in the JFK assassination.
There are clues as to what is in a redacted section of Schlesinger's memo.
Chad Nagle and Dan Storper's article on New Orleans gets everything wrong.
Believing Michael Kurtz is problematic.
Morley wrote that there are two redacted memos on CIA reorganization, but there is only one. He wrote about Goodwin's copy as if it was a different memo, rather than a copy of the Schlesinger memo.
The phrase 'who shot John' does not refer to the JFK assassination.
Only one word is redacted in Harvey's deposition.
There are no redactions in the Operation Northwoods document.
Kilgallen had nothing to tell.
An underwhelming interview of Marina Oswald.
Morley often repeats stories and changes their meanings.
Chad Nagle claims there was an assassination plot against JFK in Chicago in November 1963. One problem: There is no evidence of such a plot.
A response to Morley's Substack post alleging that I am a CIA apologist.
A rebuttal to Morley's response to my post Was Bill Harvey in Dallas in November of 1963?
There is no credible evidence Harvey was in Dallas in November of 1963.
Morley repeats the claim that Dulles was at a CIA training center during the weekend of the JFK assassination. He wasn't.
Morley's claims about Efron are all wrong.
Morley responded to my article "The Truth about Operation Northwoods." Here is my reply.
W. Tracy Parnell is one of the best JFK assassination researchers out there. Here is his look at Jefferson Morley with several important articles.
Operation Northwoods can only be understood as part of the Kennedys' war against Cuba and Operation Mongoose.
And a response from me.
There is no evidence that Dr. West petitioned the court to examine Jack Ruby before his trial.
There is absolutely no evidence that Dr. Louis Jolyon West interfered with Jack Ruby's case.
Jefferson Morley used a fake Oswald handbill in his press conference for the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
An examination of redactions in the JFK collection of documents.