Speaker 1: Already and this is this is the Daily OS. This
Speaker 1: is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
Speaker 2: the twenty first of March. I'm Zara, I'm billy. This
Speaker 2: week the US government released a huge bunch of documents
Speaker 2: relating to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy
Speaker 2: or JFK. He was assassinated decades ago, and yet questions
Speaker 2: today remain about what actually happened on that day in
Speaker 2: November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: Now there are thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2: Of pages that have been released, including things like confidential memos,
Speaker 2: Department of Defense documents and more. The documents have also
Speaker 2: called into question the unexpected role an Australian played in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty three event.
Speaker 4: Okay, Zara, So I think before we jump into this
Speaker 4: story and explain why it's in the news cycle at
Speaker 4: the moment, we should go back to the key details
Speaker 4: around the assassination of JFK. And for those who you know,
Speaker 4: I'm sure we've kind of all heard about it, But
Speaker 4: for those who don't know the exact details, we should
Speaker 4: go through those.
Speaker 2: You mean, those that aren't as obsessed as I am.
Speaker 2: I think my mum told me to stop buying books
Speaker 2: on this because it was becoming weird.
Speaker 4: I think it's one of the first things I learned
Speaker 4: about you that you are absolutely obsessed not just with
Speaker 4: JFK but also the entire Kennedy family.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I hope that his grandson is not listening to
Speaker 2: this because that would be embarrassing. But yees, this is
Speaker 2: suddenly a story that I am interested in. But I
Speaker 2: also think there's a lot of global interest in it,
Speaker 2: and we'll get to that a bit later. You said
Speaker 2: to just talk through the basic facts of what happened,
Speaker 2: and I can go off what we understand. The thing
Speaker 2: is that so many of these facts are contested, but
Speaker 2: we'll go through what we know.
Speaker 3: So firstly, John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy or JFK as we will refer to him for
Speaker 2: the rest of the podcast. He was elected as the
Speaker 2: President of the United States at the nineteen sixty election.
Speaker 2: He was a Democrat, and he was also the youngest
Speaker 2: ever elected president, coming to the highest office in the
Speaker 2: country at the age of forty three. Just to give
Speaker 2: you some context, Barack Obama was forty seven when he
Speaker 2: was elected as president.
Speaker 4: And No one has been younger than him when coming
Speaker 4: into office.
Speaker 3: No, not since that time.
Speaker 2: So it was really this youthfulness that he brought and
Speaker 2: really defined a lot of his presidency in terms of,
Speaker 2: I guess his policy agenda. He served at the height
Speaker 2: of the Cold War, and much of his foreign policy
Speaker 2: direction was informed by that context. So a lot happened
Speaker 2: with Cuba during that time, there was a lot about
Speaker 2: communism and the USSR, so that was really the platform
Speaker 2: that he was elected as president on. Then domestically, during
Speaker 2: his time as president, JFK was a very strong advocate
Speaker 2: for the civil rights movement, and his administration also had
Speaker 2: this really strong focus on organized crime. So that's just
Speaker 2: a really high level run through about who JFK was
Speaker 2: now to the assassination. So on November twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three, JFK was driving through Dallas, Texas in an
Speaker 2: open top motorcade.
Speaker 3: So if you're.
Speaker 2: Thinking in your mind, it's a car that has no roof,
Speaker 2: and you know, today we can never imagine a president
Speaker 2: driving through the streets with something like that, but at
Speaker 2: the time that was a fairly normal thing to do.
Speaker 3: He was driving in.
Speaker 2: The car with his wife, Jackie and with the then
Speaker 2: Texan Governor John Connolly and his wife Nellie, and so
Speaker 2: while driving down the street in the middle of the
Speaker 2: day in Dallas. JFK was shot from the nearby Texas
Speaker 2: Schoolbook Depository. That was at twelve thirty pm on that Friday.
Speaker 2: By one pm, half an hour later, JFK was pronounced
Speaker 2: dead and.
Speaker 1: The assassination was live stream. Would you call it live stream?
Speaker 2: I don't know if we'd call it. It was captured,
Speaker 2: was captured. There's a video, and.
Speaker 1: There's still footage that you can watch it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a truder film.
Speaker 1: It's the footage is wild.
Speaker 3: It's really so remarkable.
Speaker 2: It wasn't released for some time after, or at least
Speaker 2: the full video wasn't released for some time after the assassination.
Speaker 2: But then when the world could see it for the
Speaker 2: first time, it was, as you just said, so unbelievable
Speaker 2: to watch an American president assassinated in in clear view.
Speaker 2: It was unprecedented.
Speaker 4: The thing that I remember about it that has stuck
Speaker 4: with me ever since I saw it is his wife,
Speaker 4: Jackie turning around to kind of see if she can
Speaker 4: catch his head.
Speaker 3: Like it was just it's so visceral and yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: You see Jackie kind of clamber back and then you
Speaker 2: see the governor shield his wife and dark like you
Speaker 2: see it all in real time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: That was something that was so unique about this and
Speaker 2: I think having that footage goes to why there is
Speaker 2: so much of an obsession as to what has happened
Speaker 2: here and what has happened since. So back to November
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty three, a short time after JFK was shot,
Speaker 2: a man called Lee Harvey Oswald, he was a US
Speaker 2: Marine veteran. He was arrested nearby and he was arrested
Speaker 2: for the alleged assassination of the president and also for
Speaker 2: the murder of a policeman a short time after Kennedy
Speaker 2: was shot.
Speaker 4: So, just to be clear, the person who killed JFK
Speaker 4: then went on to kill a policeman right after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's what we understand about what happened. This person,
Speaker 2: as I said, his name was Lee Harvey Oswald. He
Speaker 2: was arrested on that same Friday, and then on the
Speaker 2: Sunday of that same week, so amir, two days later,
Speaker 2: Lee Harvey Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from police
Speaker 2: headquarters to the county jail. We referred to earlier the
Speaker 2: fact that this was kind of the precipice of video
Speaker 2: and people watching things for the first time, you know,
Speaker 2: random tied. But but Kennedy and Nixon's presidential debate was
Speaker 2: the first televised debate ever, and so people were watching
Speaker 2: all of this unfolded in real time. And so as
Speaker 2: viewers around the world were watching Lee Harvey Oswald being
Speaker 2: transferred in police custody to this county jail, they suddenly
Speaker 2: saw somebody at point blank range shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 3: And kill him.
Speaker 2: It's just to think of this happening now, of a
Speaker 2: president being assassinated, and then shortly after, two days after
Speaker 2: the alleged assassin himself being shot. It was just this
Speaker 2: like huge upheaval. And we later found out that the
Speaker 2: shooter of Lee Harvey Oswald was identified as Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby was a night car bonner and he shot
Speaker 2: Lee Harvey Oswold before Oswald could ever stand trial for
Speaker 2: the assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's unthinkable to think about it happening today,
Speaker 4: but it was also unthinkable at the time, and that's
Speaker 4: why we are still talking about it more than sixty
Speaker 4: years later because it was such a moment in history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those things that you know, you
Speaker 2: ask your parents or your grandparents where they were when
Speaker 2: they found out, and then when they were when they
Speaker 2: found out that Oswald had been killed.
Speaker 1: Just crazy.
Speaker 4: Okay, So to recap, JFK was shot while riding in
Speaker 4: an open top car through Dallas. Authorities arrested the shooter
Speaker 4: and named him as Lee Harvey Oswald. As Oswald was
Speaker 4: being transferred to jail, he himself was shot and he
Speaker 4: was killed by a nightclub owner called Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2: Correct and even saying it today, you know, there are
Speaker 2: so many twists and turns of this story, and it's
Speaker 2: certainly one that has given rise to a whole host.
Speaker 3: Of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: I'm sure our listeners aren't coming to this for the
Speaker 2: first time, but really there is so much doubt around
Speaker 2: the facts of what happened and how they played out.
Speaker 4: When I think of conspiracy theories, I think of JFK,
Speaker 4: the assassination of JFK, the moon landing, and nine to eleven,
Speaker 4: And this is this is one.
Speaker 3: Of the big, very big of stories there.
Speaker 4: Well, those are the three big stories, and this is
Speaker 4: absolutely up there because I feel like what I know
Speaker 4: about the JFK is I almost know about the conspiracy
Speaker 4: theories before I know the actual details.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, like this is something that has remained
Speaker 2: true for decades, even though there was this independent investigation
Speaker 2: finding shortly afterwards that found no evidence of a domestic
Speaker 2: or foreign conspiracy. Despite that, conspiracy theories have always run wild.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to go through all of them.
Speaker 2: We would do a whole podcast on that, but I
Speaker 2: do just want to add some insight I guess into
Speaker 2: what the.
Speaker 3: Nature of these theories are.
Speaker 2: So a lot of them revolve around the direction of
Speaker 2: the bullet that killed JFK. There's a lot that goes
Speaker 2: into people not thinking that Leejaviosold was the only shooter
Speaker 2: who was there that day, and who else could have
Speaker 2: been involved and why could they have been involved. Some
Speaker 2: of these theories point to Cuba and the role the
Speaker 2: Cuban government could have potentially played. There are some conspiracy
Speaker 2: theorists who believe that the Cuban government, who had a
Speaker 2: very antagonistic relationship with the US government during the Kennedy administration.
Speaker 2: These conspiracy theorists think that they found out about an
Speaker 2: alleged assassination plot of the Cuban leader and therefore carried
Speaker 2: out their own assassination plot of the US leader. There's
Speaker 2: never been any evidence to suggest that is true, but
Speaker 2: that is certainly one that keeps coming up. On the
Speaker 2: complete other side of the spectrum, there are people who
Speaker 2: believe that the CIA had something to do with it,
Speaker 2: that it was this kind of inside job.
Speaker 4: The CIA being the Central Intelligence agency who's basically responsible
Speaker 4: for surveillance and intelligence, the spy.
Speaker 3: Agency in the US.
Speaker 2: So this line of thinking is that it was something
Speaker 2: potentially to do with organized crime, or it was something
Speaker 2: to do with Russia, or who knows. There's so many
Speaker 2: different ideas, but that this was basically an inside job
Speaker 2: that had been covered up. And so while we can't
Speaker 2: go through all of these theories, what I do just
Speaker 2: want to say is there has always been this, I guess,
Speaker 2: seed of doubt that has been sewn into the story
Speaker 2: of the JFK assassination. And there have always been people,
Speaker 2: people with very high profiles, who have suggested that what
Speaker 2: they understand about the assassination might not be what actually happened.
Speaker 4: And so the reason we're talking about it this week
Speaker 4: is because well, if we go back to January, when
Speaker 4: US President Donald Trump became president for the second time,
Speaker 4: he signed in executive order to release the documents that
Speaker 4: speak about the assassination and kind of all of the
Speaker 4: documents that have been secret for sixty years now, and
Speaker 4: then finally this week those documents were released.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it does make it out to be
Speaker 2: a bit more of a blockbuster release than it actually was.
Speaker 2: I'll just explain it's like pretty complex, but I just
Speaker 2: want to go through I guess the history of these documents,
Speaker 2: because this isn't the first time that we have had
Speaker 2: documents relating to the assassination of JFK. So what happened
Speaker 2: was and just bear with me on this. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two, Congress passed a law requiring the National Archives
Speaker 2: and Records Administration to basically put together all the different
Speaker 2: government records they had relating to JFK's assassination into place.
Speaker 2: And at the same time that this law came into
Speaker 2: effects requiring this, it also mandated that documents relating to
Speaker 2: JFK's assassination had to be released within twenty five years,
Speaker 2: except any documents that do identifiable harm to national security.
Speaker 2: So this law came into effect in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: and it had this kind of twenty five year sunset clause,
Speaker 2: So that twenty five year deadline came up in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: when you might remember Donald Trump was also the president's
Speaker 2: So at that time, Trump released.
Speaker 3: Some of the papers as he was required to.
Speaker 2: He did though, say that he would put a hold
Speaker 2: on releasing all of them to allow intelligence agencies more
Speaker 2: time to deal with some of the complexities of it.
Speaker 2: But at that time, in twenty seventeen, we got kind
Speaker 2: of the first tranch of these documents. Then in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, former President Biden released more documents, and at
Speaker 2: that time he said it was final certification under the law.
Speaker 2: That just means he was saying, no more documents are come.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: We've released everything we can release. There's nothing more to
Speaker 2: say or see here. But then fast forward to this year.
Speaker 2: In January, and like you said, Trump issued an executive
Speaker 2: order where he directed national security agencies to develop plans
Speaker 2: to release all of the remaining government records relating to
Speaker 2: the assassination of JFK, as well as the assassinations of
Speaker 2: civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior, and JFK's brother RFK,
Speaker 2: who was assassinated a mere five years after him. At
Speaker 2: the time, a White House fact sheet said that more
Speaker 2: than fifty years after these assassinations, the victims' families and
Speaker 2: the American people deserve the truth. And so under the
Speaker 2: executive order, JFK's files were to be released first, and
Speaker 2: MLK and rfk's were to follow next.
Speaker 3: And I know I just said so.
Speaker 2: Many acronyms, but all you need to know is that
Speaker 2: the Trancho documents that were released this week are by
Speaker 2: no means the first time we've had documents on the
Speaker 2: assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4: Okay, so that brings us up to this week. We
Speaker 4: get the documents, it's like six four thousand pages or
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 2: It was meant to be eighty thousand pages, but we
Speaker 2: only got sixty four thousand, oh exactly.
Speaker 1: And so what is in those documents?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, at a high level, I'm sorry to disappoint,
Speaker 2: there's nothing earth shattering in them. There's nothing that you know,
Speaker 2: provides any evidence to suggest there was a second shooter
Speaker 2: or that it was an inside job. Like, there's nothing
Speaker 2: here that confirms any of the conspiracy theories that we've
Speaker 2: had kind of out there in the universe for the
Speaker 2: last couple decades. What we did learn from the documents
Speaker 2: was just some more information about Lee Harvey Oswald. For one,
Speaker 2: we learned some more about the time he spent in
Speaker 2: Mexico where he was attempting to get a visa into
Speaker 2: Cuba before coming back to the US before the assassination.
Speaker 2: That's given, I guess, some room for the people who
Speaker 2: think that Cuba might be involved to be like, told
Speaker 2: you so, but there's no real evidence they're linking anything substantially.
Speaker 2: There were also some claims included in the documents that
Speaker 2: CIA operatives knew about Oswald's plans prior to the assassination,
Speaker 2: but mostly the documents really just revealed some details about
Speaker 2: smaller incidents within the CIA. I was reading some analysis
Speaker 2: that said, really, the people who will be most annoyed
Speaker 2: by the release of this documents is just former CIA workers,
Speaker 2: because it includes details about them and their jobs and
Speaker 2: times they messed up at work, and not necessarily this
Speaker 2: big sort of groundbreaking stuff. And more broadly, we did
Speaker 2: just learn some more about the political landscape and how
Speaker 2: US agencies were thinking that JFK's death might impact geopolitics
Speaker 2: and their relationships with other countries. But given how much
Speaker 2: hype there had been, historical analysts are saying, well, we
Speaker 2: didn't really learn anything we didn't know before.
Speaker 4: One thing that did pique my interest was earlier this
Speaker 4: week when I was doing their headlines in the afternoon
Speaker 4: with Emma. Her angle on the story was that there
Speaker 4: was this new Australian connection that we didn't really know
Speaker 4: anything about.
Speaker 3: So random.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain what happened there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, we don't have a heap of information. But
Speaker 2: what we did find out was that the CIA investigated
Speaker 2: anonymous phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra
Speaker 2: just before and just after the assassination of JFK. And
Speaker 2: so these documents show that the then as O boss
Speaker 2: SO was talking about the boss of Australia's spy agency.
Speaker 2: He wrote to the CIA and requested that the investigation
Speaker 2: into those phone calls be kept a secret. So these
Speaker 2: documents show that a there were these mysterious phone calls
Speaker 2: that happened to the US Embassy in Australia, and b
Speaker 2: that any investigation into why and how those phone calls
Speaker 2: came to be that that had to remain a secret,
Speaker 2: and so we found out that the CIA boss confirmed
Speaker 2: that the investigation would not be made public, and it hasn't.
Speaker 2: We've never found out why those phone calls happened or
Speaker 2: what the connection to Australia might be.
Speaker 4: But so this is the first time that we found
Speaker 4: out about those phone calls, correct. But now we don't
Speaker 4: know nothing else.
Speaker 2: One of those things IA boss kept his promise, it
Speaker 2: never got the public.
Speaker 4: So it's one of those things where it's kind of
Speaker 4: raised more questions than it's answered.
Speaker 2: I think that can be said truly for all of
Speaker 2: these documents, so many of the people that were involved,
Speaker 2: you know, in them, have since passed away or are
Speaker 2: out of the workforce, or all of these sorts of
Speaker 2: things where not many people are in a position to
Speaker 2: give the answers that people might be wanting.
Speaker 4: So interesting, I wonder if you can do a freedom
Speaker 4: of information request.
Speaker 3: Well, really, I guess you'll have to do it. We'll
Speaker 3: get back to you're the only one looking into it.
Speaker 4: I wonder, And by just talking through how the Kennedy
Speaker 4: family is still very involved in American politics, even Caroline
Speaker 4: Kennedy was just the ambassador to Australia, So.
Speaker 2: You were going to say, even she has sat in
Speaker 2: this seat and been interviewed on this podcast, which she has.
Speaker 4: She has, but she's not the only person in the
Speaker 4: Kennedy family who is still very involved in politics. So
Speaker 4: do you want to take us through the members of
Speaker 4: the family that are still in public life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are many, but I guess just
Speaker 2: the two that I think are relevant to this store.
Speaker 2: The first being RFK Junior. So we've spoken about him
Speaker 2: on this podcast before. He's currently the Health Secretary. He
Speaker 2: was appointed by Donald Trump. He endorsed Donald Trump at
Speaker 2: the last election. He ran himself but then dropped out.
Speaker 2: He's the nephew of JFK and he has long pedaled
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories relating to the death of his uncle. So
Speaker 2: he's one of those people that believes that the CIA
Speaker 2: had something to do with his uncle's death. And shortly
Speaker 2: after getting rfk's endorsement during the presidential race, Trump announced
Speaker 2: that he'd make these files public.
Speaker 3: So there was like.
Speaker 2: Some tenuous kind of connection between the two things where
Speaker 2: he was saying, we've had RFK Junior publicly talk about
Speaker 2: the fact that he thinks there's more out there, and
Speaker 2: Trump saying I'll do everything I can to get that
Speaker 2: information out there. But it has to be said that
Speaker 2: not all Kennedys are on board with the release of
Speaker 2: these documents. JFK's grandson, so the son of Caroline Kennedy,
Speaker 2: the former ambassador to Australia, He's been very vocal in
Speaker 2: his opposition. He wrote on X the truth is a
Speaker 2: lot sadder than the myth. He's referring there to conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: a tragedy that didn't need to happen, not part of
Speaker 2: an inevitable grand scheme. He then went on to write
Speaker 2: this week, President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather, but
Speaker 2: not in his life or what he achieved in it. No,
Speaker 2: just like Robert Kennedy Junior, Donald Trump is only interested
Speaker 2: in JFK's carcass. So very strong words there of some
Speaker 2: members of the Kennedy family saying we're not learning anything new,
Speaker 2: there's no conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 3: Just let it be and let's move on.
Speaker 4: It's quite sad seeing this family dispute being played out
Speaker 4: on the biggest stage possible.
Speaker 2: It is, and I mean again, we could do a
Speaker 2: whole podcast on the Kennedy family. But that is a
Speaker 2: family that has experienced so much grief, so much loss,
Speaker 2: all of it has played out in the public eye.
Speaker 2: And now, as you said, now there's this kind of
Speaker 2: family feued over their grandfather's legacy also playing out as
Speaker 2: a political story. So I imagine, yeah, that this must
Speaker 2: be a really difficult thing.
Speaker 4: Well, Zara, thank you for taking us through it. Thank you,
Speaker 4: and thank you so much for listening to this episode
Speaker 4: of The Daily os. We'll be back again this afternoon
Speaker 4: with your evening headlines. Until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.