George Joannides

CIA covert action specialist and liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations 1978.

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Whatever one’s view of the Kennedy assassination, there is little doubt that successive investigations have been a boon to historical researchers. The career of George Joannides, largely uncovered by the work of Jefferson Morley, sheds significant light on the role of the CIA in Greece among other issues.

George Joannides in 1963 (US Government, public domain).

George E. Joannides (1922-1990) was a long serving CIA officer, who worked as a Greek specialist until he was posted to Miami in 1962. In this position, he was the CIA handler for the DRE, a Cuban exile group which had a number of run-ins with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Joannides subsequently returned to Athens where he was posted at the time of the 1967 Colonels' coup. His later career tracks closely with that of former Miami Station chief Ted Shackley, including positions in Vietnam, and as chief of the Covert Action Staff in the Western Hemisphere and East Asian Divisions. In 1978, he served as CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was unaware that he was the DRE agent-handler it was looking for under the pseudonym 'Howard.'