British newspaper got tip-off before Kennedy assassination
A BRITISH newspaper received a mystery call promising “some big news” in the United States almost half an hour before the assassination of John F Kennedy, it was revealed yesterday.
Last night there were claims the call was made by a British-born Soviet agent called Albert Osborne, from Grimsby, who befriended killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
The astonishing revelation was contained in one of more than 2,800 previously unseen records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which have been released by the US National Archives under orders from President Donald Trump.
A memo about the tip-off to the local newspaper was sent to the FBI by MI5.
According to the document, the anonymous phone call was apparently made to a senior reporter at the Cambridge News on the day Mr Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas.
The documents said: “The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news and then hung up.”
The journalist reported receiving the call at 6.05pm and MI5 calculated it was 25 minutes before the assassination.
Jaw-dropping
The document, from deputy director James Angleton, said: “The British Security Service (MI5) has reported that at 1805 GMT on 22 November an anonymous telephone call was made in Cambridge, England, to the senior reporter of the Cambridge News.
“The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news, and then hung up.”
Anna Savva, a reporter who currently works at the Cambridge News, said hearing about the call was “completely jaw-dropping”.
She said: “It would have been common knowledge in the office who took the call, but we have nothing in our archive – we have nobody here who knows the name of the person who took the call.”
She added that there was just speculation as to why the anonymous caller chose the Cambridge News.
President Kennedy was shot as he rode in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza at 12.30pm local time, which is six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time.
The memo added: “After the word of the President’s death was received, the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call and the police informed MI5.
“The important point is that the call was made, according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot. The Cambridge reporter had never received a call of this kind before and MI5 state that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.”
The memo added that similar anonymous phone calls “of a strangely coincidental nature” had been received by people in the UK over the past year “particularly in connection with the The secret memo detailing the call to the Cambridge News 25 minutes before Kennedy was shot by Oswald, right case of Dr Ward” – thought to be a reference to Dr Stephen Ward, one of the central figures in the Profumo affair.
A copy of the memo, dated November 26, 1963, was released by the National Archives in July this year, but had gone unreported until the latest batch of documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination were released.
THEY sit incongruously in the middle of a three-lane highway here in Dallas. Two large crosses in lime green tape mark with chilling precision the spots where bullets ripped into President John F Kennedy on a November day more than half a century ago and left an indelible scar on the American psyche.
When the traffic lights change in Dealey Plaza there are 40 seconds of peace when it is possible to stand on the cross where the second fatal bullet tore open JFK’s skull. However many times you have seen the grainy amateur film of the assassination, it is impossible not to be moved by the powerful feeling that somehow you are intruding on the grief of a nation.
Look back up the hill, as I did yesterday, and there is the book depository building from where the shots were fired. Go inside and on the sixth floor you can stand by the window where Lee Harvey Oswald lined up the President in his rifle’s sights. Your mind inevitably churns over the possibilities.
Could one man really have committed such a crime without help? Was he just an ordinary Joe or a trained assassin? What marksmanship was needed to hit a moving target in the head from 90 yards? Was there a second gunman on the grassy knoll by the road?
These questions are slowly being addressed as, piece by piece, the last of the secret JFK files are made public. They reveal details about Oswald’s links with the Soviets, the Cubans and the Mexicans. But this enduring search for answers cannot address the biggest question of all.
WILL the US ever accept the truth about itself? That the Land Of The Free remains to this day a broken captive of its bloody past. That racism, hatred and inequality still scar its soul. There is much to inspire awe here – America’s wealth, its power, its dynamism – but there is much to provoke sorrow and even anger.
Americans love a conspiracy theory: six per cent don’t believe a man landed on the moon (that’s about 20 million people); 80 per cent believe aliens have contacted Earth and the US government is covering it up; 30 per cent, a staggering 100 million Americans, don’t believe JFK’s killer could have acted alone. There is a belief in America that authority cannot be trusted, that power will always be abused.
The conclusion is that many Americans are happy to foment the politics of paranoia and the anarchic view that JFK’s real killers were the CIA, the FBI, the Soviets, the Cubans, the Communists, the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, even Vice President Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texan tycoons – anyone but Oswald working alone.
Because to accept that one man was capable of killing a president, America would also have to accept the harsh reality that it is a breathtakingly beautiful country populated by ugly people with guns. Minds are twisted by drugs and communities are poisoned by racism and inequality.
It suits America to allow the JFK conspiracy to rumble on because it draws a smokescreen around the awful facts about its past. It hides the bitter truth that for all the social progress that has been made, much of it instigated during JFK’s 1,000day reign in the White House, a dark shadow remains over this land.
Oswald may have pulled the trigger but to an Englishman in Texas it seems America itself was to blame and is incapable of ever pleading guilty.
JFK was hated by extremists on all sides: by the far Left because he stood up to the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis, on the far Right in the Deep South because he tentatively embraced the civil rights movement. The Texan Baptists despised the fact he was a Catholic. Mobsters were enraged by his threat to destroy their empires. The gun lobby feared he might introduce strict controls.
In the days before his assassination, thousands of leaflets were distributed in Dallas featuring a mugshot photo of Kennedy over the words “Wanted for Treason”.
“But that was the past,” America protests. “We are enlightened now.” Really? The Las Vegas massacre was a bloody reminder of how little the US has changed.
OFFICIALLY there are more than 300 million guns here. Unofficially the figure is 600 million. Up until yesterday there had been 12,674 gun deaths this year – this will have risen by 200 by the time you read this.
In Virginia this summer we witnessed torch-bearing white supremacists descend on the college town of Charlottesville. Three died in the violence that ensued and the bigots who attacked black students defended their actions by citing their right to freedom of speech.
Racism is why black American footballers drop to one knee in protest during the national anthem.
Living the American Dream becomes harder every year. While the wealthiest one per cent earn an average of $1.3million a year, the bottom 50 per cent of the pile earn just 12 per cent of the national income. It is why so many desperate panhandlers beg for food and money on the streets of Dallas – and every other city.
President Trump was right: it is time to make America great again. But playing the blame game polarises, deepening divisions. JFK’s vision of unity has gone.
God bless America. And God help it, too.
‘The US is a captive of its bloody past’