Another example of a a document that was long sought by assassination researchers was a letter from Brigadier Charles Spry, the chief of Australia’s equivalent of the CIA, to the agency’s director, Richard Helms. In an October 15, 1968, letter, Spry told Helms that he “recommended strongly” not to declassify a document dated November 29, 1963, only seven days after the assassination (that document was later identified as Warren Commission Document (CD) 971). The Sydney Morning Herald had made a request on March 26, 1968, in a letter the paper sent to Helms, to declassify the document. The Herald request came after the Saturday Evening Post had published an article by David Wise, in which he described the classified document: “Anonymous telephone calls to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia relative to planned assassination of President Kennedy.”
When CD 971 was first declassified in 1976, it seemed explosive since it was from someone who claimed to a Polish chauffeur for the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. The document was a memo from the CIA’s Richard Helms to one of the Warren Commission attorneys (Lee Rankin). It said, in part: “This individual, while discussing several matters of intelligence interest, touched on the possibility that the Soviet Government had financed the assassination of President Kennedy. Reference was made in this cable to the receipt of a similar anonymous telephone call on 15 October 1962.” The caller claimed that “Iron Curtain Countries” had a $100,000 bounty on JFK’s head. Moreover, the CIA did not learn about the 1962 call until after JFK’s murder.
Did someone calling the American Embassy in Australia have foreknowledge of the assassination and try to warn Kennedy? Helms reported to Rankin that: “In the opinion of the Australian authorities, the caller was a crank. In any event, they were not able to identify any Polish employee of the Soviet Embassy, the automobile described by the caller as the one he drove, or the license plate number given by him. No further information on this call has been received. Available evidence would tend to show that the caller was some type of crank. This conclusion, however, cannot be confirmed.”
Most researchers long ago reached a similar conclusion. The caller had also claimed in 1962 that “about five Russian submarines carrying 400 to 500 Soviet soldiers” were on their way to Cuba. This troop movement, according to the bizarre claim, was “to support the Governor of Mississippi.” After the assassination, the same caller reached the US embassy. He said that when he drove two Soviets on November 22, 1963, their shortwave radio announced, “we have achieved what we want,” and later they joined other Russians at the USSR embassy in celebrating with vodka. The car and the license plate given by the caller did not exist. There were no troops dispatched by Russia to Cuba on secret submarine trips.
However, if the calls were only malicious pranks, why did the CIA fight for six decades to keep secret portions of the cover letter from the chief of Australia’s CIA to the head of the American CIA?
