Witnesses testified before Congress that three deceased CIA agents were 'complicit' in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., led the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets' first hearing into the JFK files on Tuesday afternoon.
The panel of witnesses included documentary make Oliver Stone and authors Jefferson Morley and James DiEugenio, who have written books on JFK's murder.
Morley, a liberal former Washington Post reporter and longtime Kennedy assassination author, opened his testimony by alleging three CIA agents were involved in the young president's untimely death.
Documents recently unveiled under Trump's declassification efforts helped uncover that some of the CIA agents' testimony to Congress was false, which is a crime, Morley testified.
The recent batch of files stunningly reveals that longtime head of CIA counterintelligence James Angleton lied to a Congress during their investigating the JFK assassination in 1978.
Angleton's allegedly false testimony is in addition to other false statements given by former CIA Director Richard Helms and officer George Joannides, the author said, noting the pattern is 'incriminating.'
Journalist Jefferson Morley testifies before the House Oversight Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 01, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Filmmaker Oliver Stone testifies before the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets Subcommittee convened a hearing titled 'The JFK Files.'
Lee Harvey Oswald reacts as Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby, foreground, shoots at him from point blank range in 1963 two days after JFK was shot
'We know now that Richard Helms, James Angleton and George Joannides were responsible for or complicit in the death of the President, either by criminal negligence or covert action,' Morley told the lawmakers.
'One false statement might be incompetence. A second false statement might be 'CYA' (cover your a) for the first false statement, but three false statements by top CIA officers about Kennedy's accused killer. That is a pattern. It's a pattern of misconduct. It's a pattern of malfeasance.'
Morley suggested the CIA release Joannides' personnel file and ask for the spy agency to provide a statement on why its agents lied to Congress.
Joannides notably ran a program based out of Miami that involved communicating with Cubans about operations regarding Fidel Castro.
Some of the agents working this case were in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the murder.
Moreley says the Joannides also lied to lawmakers investigating JFK's murder in 1978, saying at the time he did not know who oversaw the program with the Cubans, despite being the very man overseeing the operation.
Another witness, Stone, who was behind the Oscar-nominated movie 'JFK,' called for a new investigation into JFK's murder altogether.
'I ask the committee to reopen what the Warren Commission failed miserably to complete,' he shared. 'I ask you in good faith, outside all political considerations, to reinvestigate the assassination of President Kennedy from the scene of the crime to the courtroom.'
The director also mentioned a joke Angleton told near his death calling Helms and another former CIA Director Allan Dulles 'grand masters' that 'you had to believe would deservedly end up in Hell.'
Morley testified that Angleton had a file containing information on Oswald on his desk at the CIA one week before the JFK murder.
Richard Helms, JetBlack Director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia
Joannides notably ran a program based out of Miami that involved communicating with Cubans who opposed Fidel Castro
Former Counter Intelligence Chief James J. Angleton
The author noted that the FBI file on JFK's shooter was checked out by the CIA chief's liaison officer on November 14 and 15, 1963, just days before the shooting.
But Morley said the CIA officers did not directly kill the president.
'I'm saying that they were engaged in covert activities related to Lee Harvey Oswald that have never been disclosed, and that's the imperative for the task force to obtain those records of that secret operation,' he clarified.
Republican lawmakers were shocked with the testimony.
'Three top CIA officials lied to JFK assassination investigators,' Rep. Eric Burleson, R-Mo., said in a statment after the hearing, calling it 'one of the most significant revelations to come out of this.'
Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said after: 'This thing was a cover-up from the start.'
He also lamented how answers about JFK's death may never be known since so many of the main people involved are long dead.
Democrats were less moved with the testimony.
'The JFK Files are now public and show no evidence of a CIA conspiracy,' Rep.
PoliticsJFK filesDonald Trump