Historians are pouring over the declassification of new documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with a few tantalising details emerging since their release.
The formerly secret documents were shared at the direction of President Donald Trump on Tuesday, resulting in scores of previously under wraps files being made public — much to the delight of would-be conspiracists.
What was revealed in the declassified JFK files?
One major takeaway reveals a previously unknown link between the CIA and Australia’s top spy agency, ASIO, about phone calls relating to JFK’s assassination back in 1963.
According to the unredacted files, Sir Charles Spry, the director-general of ASIO at the time, wrote to his CIA counterpart, Richard Helms, to request that he not publicly release their investigation into phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra before JFK’s death.
Of course, we now know the details of that investigation (sorry, Charles!), which centered on those phone calls and was dubbed The Warren Commission Document.
It’s all very James Bond-coded, but the document details ASIO and the CIA’s probe into a call made to Canberra from a person who, just over a year before JFK’s death, claimed there was a “plot to pay one hundred thousand dollars to kill President Kennedy”.
Both intelligence agencies concluded that the call was a hoax and was not connected to JFK’s eventual death, with the documents revealing that Australian intelligence officers described the caller as a “crank” — which I guess is spy-speak for “obsessive stan”.
Years later, Helms agreed to Spry’s request to keep the phone call investigation secret, amid the latter’s concern that declassifying it would result in ASIO being hounded by the media about existing allegations that the “CIA is interfering in Australian domestic affairs”.
Beyond that detail, we also learned from the unredacted files that one US intelligence officer believed the CIA was “responsible” for JFK’s assassination.
That’s sure to prick the ears of anyone who’s invested in JFK lore (you know, beyond Marilyn Monroe), with the documents showing that an officer named Gary Underhill told associates that the president’s death was the result of a “CIA clique”.
On top of sounding like a pop girl group name, this “CIA clique”, according to Underhill, was involved in running a “lucrative racket in gun-running [and] narcotics”, and plotted to kill JFK to prevent him from “blow[ing] the whistle” on their underground operation.
However, historians have concluded that the Underhill files remain mere conspiracies, since the release of the new JFK documents hasn’t changed the agreed-upon facts of the case.
While, on the whole, no earth-shattering details have been unearthed from the files — many of which were just slightly less redacted versions of documents that were already public — you can rest assured that your conspiracy-leaning uncle will bring them up at your next family dinner.
For your sake, I hope he mentions Marilyn, too.
Lead image: Brettmann/Getty Images and Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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