Former House Select Committee on Assassinations researchers and investigators told the House Oversight task force that the Central Intelligence Agency obstructed congressional probes into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that the agency ran operations in Mexico City in which Lee Harvey Oswald was used as an asset.

"For the past 62 years, the Central Intelligence Agency has actively and continuously obstructed the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with no consequences for their actions," investigator Mr. Hardway testified. He described what he called an "illegal domestic covert operation" and said the CIA assigned an undercover officer to the select committee's investigation in 1978.

Mr. Hardway and other witnesses said the CIA used a propaganda and "dangle" operation in Mexico City in late 1963 involving Oswald and Cuban exile groups. He and others named a CIA officer, identified in testimony as George Joe Anides (also referenced in historical records under similar spellings), as an operative connected to those activities and urged the task force to seek immediate public release of his files. "We now know that not only was DRE still a CIA operation all the way through 1963 and all the way up to April 1964," Mr. Hardway said.

Douglas Horne and Judge John Tunheim told the panel the ARRB sought related files in the 1990s and that some agency holdings were not presented to the review board. Tunheim said he had written to President Biden asking that the CIA release the Joe Anides file and had not received a response. Committee members and witnesses called for staff to press the CIA to locate and turn over those files, noting that records the ARRB requested were sometimes withheld, redacted or retyped before being shown to investigators in the 1970s.

Witnesses stopped short of asserting that CIA operational contact with Oswald proves agency involvement in the assassination. Mr. Hardway said operational use of Oswald does not necessarily mean the CIA directed the killing, though he argued such use creates a strong motive for agencies to constrain investigations. Members asked staff to obtain records identified by witnesses and to pursue foreign files and archival sources the witnesses said may contain additional information.