At Tuesday's House Oversight Committee hearing, Dan Hardway, a former staffer on the Select Committee on Assassinations, alleged that the CIA has obstructed the investigation into the JFK assassination.
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00:00Now, I would like to recognize Mr. Hardway for an opening statement.
00:09For the past 62 years, the Central Intelligence Agency has actively and continuously obstructed
00:14the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with no consequences
00:19for their actions.
00:22Ten years ago, the CIA's official historian admitted that the CIA had hidden information
00:28from the Warren Commission during its investigation.
00:32The CIA stonewalled the Senate Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect
00:37to intelligence activities, the Church Committee.
00:43The CIA was not forthcoming with the Rockefeller Commission.
00:47The CIA misled and slow-walked the Assassination Records Review Board.
00:53James Angleton's preferred method in dealing with the Warren Commission was to quote, wait
01:00them out.
01:01The first CIA officer I ever interviewed looked at me and said, you represent Congress, what
01:10the F is that to the CIA?
01:13You'll be gone in two years and will still be here.
01:19In 1978, the CIA ran an illegal domestic covert operation involving an undercover officer to
01:28subvert and obstruct the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
01:34That officer served undercover.
01:39That terminology is the terminology the CIA used to describe his assignment working with the Select
01:48Committee in a statement that their representative made under penalties of perjury in a lawsuit
01:56in 2005.
01:58I personally experienced the CIA's obstruction of the HSC investigation and can testify firsthand
02:05about what happened.
02:07In 1977 and 1978, I was employed as a researcher by the Select Committee, and I have submitted
02:14a detailed 17-page description of what happened then and since then, which I hope you will read.
02:22Briefly, my primary area of responsibility was Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in Mexico City
02:28in the fall of 1963 and the performance of the CIA in monitoring and reporting those activities,
02:36as well as other issues related to the possibility of CIA knowledge of or involvement in the assassination
02:41of President Kennedy and the cover-up of information relevant to the investigation of the assassination.
02:48In that capacity, I had a top-secret security clearance and, during the major portion of my employment,
02:55had access to unredacted CIA records requested for review from the CIA by the Select Committee.
03:03Implicit in the focus of my work was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated
03:09any operational connection between Oswald and the CIA.
03:14Ed Lopez and I authored the report, The CIA, Oswald, and Mexico City.
03:21In the spring of 1978, among other things, I was looking hard into back-channel communications
03:27methods used by the Mexico City Station, the use of an impulse camera to photograph the Cuban
03:33consulate in Mexico City, missing production from that impulse camera and from one of the
03:39photographic installations that covered the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and David Atley
03:46Phillips' anti-Castro propaganda operations, including his connections to stories about
03:52Oswald that rapidly appeared after the assassination of John Kennedy.
03:59In May of 1978, the CIA assigned an officer working in an undercover capacity to work with
04:06me and Mr. Lopez.
04:09That man was George Joannidis.
04:15When Joannidis was introduced to the investigation, we were told that he had no connection of any
04:20kind with any aspect of the Kennedy case that we would be investigating.
04:26In addition to that, the CIA assured us that they had no working relationship with an anti-Castro-Cuban
04:33group known as DRE.
04:38They had no relationship with the DRE when representatives of that group had an encounter with Oswald in
04:44the summer of 1963, which they turned into quite a propaganda coup.
04:52The DRE was responsible for the first-ever conspiracy theory about the assassination when the day after
04:58the assassination, they published in their newspaper the story about Oswald's pro-Castro activities in New Orleans and proposed that Castro was behind the assassination, a story that was picked
05:11up the next day by the Washington Post and the Miami Herald.
05:15Thanks to the work of the Assassination Records Review Board, though, we now know that not only was DRE still a CIA operation all the way through 1963 and all the way up to April
05:281964, its controlling case officer who oversaw the activities of the DRE and directed the DRE's activities was no one other than George
05:39Joannidis.
05:41I believe we were close to some major discoveries in 1978.
05:47And then the CIA ran an undercover operation against us.
05:51They assigned us a man who knew exactly how to keep us from finding what we were looking for.
05:59And he proceeded to do just that.
06:03Reasonable inferences may be drawn about what they did not want us to find from the substantial
06:08circumstantial evidence that has come to light by our efforts and those of the Assassination
06:16Records Review Board and the journalist, Jefferson Morley.
06:21I am a witness to these events.
06:25As such, I have a civic duty to testify.
06:28I wish I were just here.
06:30Actually I wish I weren't here.
06:32But I wish I were just here to talk about a cover up.
06:36But I'm not.
06:37I'm here to talk about a CIA covert operation directed against the Select Committee on Assassinations
06:44that was illegal and a violation of the CIA's charter as well as being a felonious obstruction
06:51of a congressional investigation.
06:54That operation was and continues to be successful.
07:00Despite our testimony, and by that I mean mine, Ed Lopez's and G. Robert Blakey's, and the clear
07:06record, no one has ever done anything about it.
07:12I have copies of the sworn testimony and exhibits of all three of us in D.C. District Court case
07:18number 17CV 1433.
07:21I have those records with me if any of the members of this task force would like to see
07:26them.
07:28The question for this task force is whether anyone in this new generation of leaders has
07:34the backbone, the courage, the gumption to try to do something even at this late date.
07:41It's easy to admit and air the sins of our ancestors.
07:45It is much harder to admit that we build their tombs and endorse their actions by our inaction.
07:55I am here to testify again, which is all that I can do.
08:00What will you do?
08:04Thank you, Mr. Hardaway.
08:05I now recognize Judge Tenheim for an opening statement.