(MENAFN) CIA officials deliberately misled US congressional investigators about the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — and even boasted about doing so, Axios reported, citing whistleblower Thomas Pearcy, a former CIA–State Department historian.

For decades, researchers and transparency advocates have demanded the full release of all government records related to the November 22, 1963 assassination. Many continue to question whether Oswald acted alone or whether a wider conspiracy was involved.

According to Pearcy, a still-classified CIA inspector general’s report reveals how intelligence officials “routinely covered up facts and records” tied to the assassination. He described the document as a CIA “damage assessment” analyzing how the agency fared during the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) probe in the late 1970s, which revisited the JFK case.

Pearcy said the file contained a 1978 memo in which a CIA officer bragged that he and two colleagues had misled HSCA chief counsel Robert Blakey by providing sanitized versions of CIA Mexico City Station files related to Oswald. The HSCA later concluded that JFK was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” though it could not determine who else may have been involved.

Oswald allegedly traveled to Mexico City in September 1963 to request visas from the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy, hoping to reach Cuba and eventually the USSR. Because both locations were under routine CIA surveillance, his visits were monitored by US intelligence.

Pearcy said he discovered the report by accident in 2009 while working inside a secure CIA facility. He also recalled seeing references to photos, cameras, and possibly film labeled “Oswald in Mexico” — material the CIA has long insisted does not exist.

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