JMWAVE Case OFFICER George JOHANNIDES

GEORGE EFYTHRON JOANNIDES
He was born amid nineteen twenty-two within the capital of Greece and his family immigrated to America the next year. George was educated within New York State and completed a degree in law amid the nineteen forties. The CIA employed him in the course of nineteen fifty-one to undertake intelligence operations targeting communist nations. Joannides was among the Agency’s case officers managing the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE, Student Revolutionary Directorate) exile group. The DRE was an international CIA funded anti-Castro organization with offices in Miami and New Orleans that undertook several paramilitary operations. Amidst nineteen sixty-two he served as Deputy Chief of the Political Warfare Branch at Miami’s JMWAVE station managing “all aspects political action and psychological warfare and supervising...case officers and clerical personnel." Two years later Joannides served as a case officer for Cuban student projects using agents for "political action, propaganda, intelligence collection" within a "hemisphere-wide apparatus."

As the nineteen sixties passed Joannides maintained "contacts with key elements of veteran's type organization as a developmental project" and managed a teacher's organization while engaging in radio and media propaganda. He retired during nineteen seventy-one but returned to CIA later that decade as the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) conducted an inquiry. Joannides was selected to assist Deputy Inspector General Scott Breckenridge as a liaison representing the CIA's Office of Legal Counsel. He oversaw the procurement and denial of information sought by investigators but concealed his past handling Cuban exile operations. Since Joannides prior role managing a CIA funded exile group was unknown to HSCA officials, this knowledge of related information slipped away. He also testified in the trial of William Kampiles, a CIA employee accused of providing secrets to the Soviets later that decade.