Huge batch of JFK files reveals shocking Australian link
Tens of thousands of pages of newly released JFK assassination files have revealed a stunning link to Australia.
Australia’s top spy wrote to the CIA asking to keep secret details of an investigation into phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra about an assassination plot before President John F. Kennedy was killed, newly declassified files have revealed.
The once “Top Secret” cables between the head of ASIO Sir Charles Spry and CIA Director Richard Helms were among more than 80,000 pages of material released by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
They shed more light on discussions between Australia’s top spy agency and the CIA about declassification of the investigation into the phone calls.
“Sir Charles’ letter to you recommends against declassification of the Warren Commission document CD-971, which refers to our investigation of anonymous telephone calls to the Canberra Embassy before and after the assassination of President Kennedy,” read the November 1968 memo to Mr Helms from William E. Nelson, chief of the CIA’s Far East Division.
Mr Helms’ response to the ASIO chief read, “Dear Charles, thank you for your letter recommending against the declassification of Warren Commission document CD-971. I might mention that our inquiry to you in August (1968) was in anticipation of further pressure for the release of Warren Commission papers, a pressure which has not materialised. Accordingly, there is not, at the present time, any intention to release CD-971.
“Should the question be raised at some future time, the points made by you in your letter provide every reason to keep the document out of the public domain.”
CD-971, which consisted of a memo from Mr Helms to the Warren Commission about the “crank” calls, was declassified in 1976.
But the CIA fought for six decades keep portions of the letter from Sir Charles to Mr Helms secret, until it was released in unredacted form in a previous batch of JFK files in 2023.
In his reasons, Sir Charles warned that “it has never been officially stated that there is a ‘CIA Canberra Station’ or that there are CIA officers in Australia”.
“Publication of these facts would invoke a spate of questions by the press and in the parliament, which would be contrary to the national security interest,” the letter read.
After President Trump promised the unredacted documents would be released, the National Archives published a total of 1123 scanned documents in PDF form on its website on Tuesday night.
“In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released,” the page reads.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the material contained any bombshells that could put to rest years of conspiracy theories about the former President’s death.
Initial reports suggested many of the records appeared to be slightly less redacted versions of documents that were released previously under the former Biden or Trump administrations.
Former Washington Post journalist Jefferson Morley, who publishes the JFK Facts blog, said the release was “an encouraging start”.
“We now have complete versions of approximately a third of the redacted JFK documents held by the National Archives (1124 of approximately 3500 documents),” Morley said in a statement.
“Rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document. Seven of ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record.
“These long-secret records shed new light on JFK’s mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald.
“The release does not include two thirds of the promised files nor any of 500-plus IRS records, nor any of the 2400 recently discovered FBI files. Nonetheless, this is most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the 1990s.”
John Greenewald Jr., founder of The Black Vault, a website which maintains a massive archive of government files obtained under freedom of information laws, gave a critical first reaction to the jumbled document dump.
“Search box on the 2025 files page is useless/broken … PDFs are still not OCR’d (searchable) … no bulk download like previous releases … no spreadsheet index of records like previous releases,” he wrote on X, adding simply, “Oof.”
Mr Kennedy, known as JFK, died on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
The official investigation, called the Warren Commission, found former Marine and defector to the Soviet Union Lee Harvey Oswald fired on Mr Kennedy’s motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Oswald was assassinated two days later in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters by nightclub operator Jack Ruby.
Appropriately on a trip to Washington DC’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the current inhabitant of the White House announced on Monday that a trove of papers concerning his death would be released the next day.
“People have been waiting for decades for this, and I’ve instructed my people … lots of different people, (Director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard that they must be released tomorrow,” Mr Trump said on Monday.
“I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything,” he added.
Mr Trump’s Monday afternoon announcement reportedly led to a scramble at the US Department of Justice with lawyers hurriedly reading hundreds of pages into the early hours to ensure they could be released.
It was thought as many as 80,000 pages of information on Mr Kennedy’s assassination on could be released.
While the 80,000 remaining pages sounds like a lot of documents, it actually represents a tiny amount of the total documentation about the death. The rest of the government held documentation is in the public domain already.
For instance, the US National Archives has stated that “more than six million pages” of documents, files and photos on the Kennedy assassination are already declassified and available to the public.
Former president Joe Biden released vast amounts of papers on JFK’s death but held some back due to national security issues.
Conspiracy theories
JFK’s death has been the subject of conspiracy theories for decades. Indeed, together with the moon landings, alternative histories on his death are almost the original conspiracy theory.
These theories include that Oswald could have been completely innocent or part of a wider plot. There have been claims there were several shooters and the actual fatal shot may have come from the famous grassy knoll in the vicinity of the motorcade.
Now US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that his father Robert Kennedy was sceptical of the Warren Commission’s findings calling it a “shoddy peace of craftsmanship”.
Nonetheless, most historians are doubtful the new release will turn up a major change to what we already know.
Talking to the US’ National Public Radio, JFK biographer Fredrik Logevall said he did not believe the new information would “dramatically overturn our understanding of what happened on that terrible day in Dallas”.
“Even if they don’t alter our understanding in this deep way, I think there’s still useful information potentially in these materials.”
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