March 20, 2025 • 19 mins
This week, over 64,000 pages of documents relating to the assassination of former U.S. President John F Kennedy were made publicly available. It comes after current President Donald Trump authorised their release in an executive order earlier this year. In today's podcast, we explain why an assassination that occurred in 1963 is still making headlines today, and what we've learned from the new documents.
Hosts: Zara Seidler and Billi FitzSimons
Producer: Orla Maher
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is this is the Daily OS. This
is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
the twenty first of March. I'm Zara, I'm billy. This
week the US government released a huge bunch of documents
relating to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy
or JFK. He was assassinated decades ago, and yet questions
today remain about what actually happened on that day in
(00:38):
November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now there are thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Of pages that have been released, including things like confidential memos,
Department of Defense documents and more. The documents have also
called into question the unexpected role an Australian played in
the nineteen sixty three event.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Okay, Zara, So I think before we jump into this
story and explain why it's in the news cycle at
the moment, we should go back to the key details
around the assassination of JFK. And for those who you know,
I'm sure we've kind of all heard about it, But
for those who don't know the exact details, we should
go through those.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You mean, those that aren't as obsessed as I am.
I think my mum told me to stop buying books
on this because it was becoming weird.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I think it's one of the first things I learned
about you that you are absolutely obsessed not just with
JFK but also the entire Kennedy family.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Anyway, I hope that his grandson is not listening to
this because that would be embarrassing. But yees, this is
suddenly a story that I am interested in. But I
also think there's a lot of global interest in it,
and we'll get to that a bit later. You said
to just talk through the basic facts of what happened,
and I can go off what we understand. The thing
is that so many of these facts are contested, but
(01:54):
we'll go through what we know.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So firstly, John F.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Kennedy or JFK as we will refer to him for
the rest of the podcast. He was elected as the
President of the United States at the nineteen sixty election.
He was a Democrat, and he was also the youngest
ever elected president, coming to the highest office in the
country at the age of forty three. Just to give
you some context, Barack Obama was forty seven when he
(02:18):
was elected as president.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
And No one has been younger than him when coming
into office.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
No, not since that time.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So it was really this youthfulness that he brought and
really defined a lot of his presidency in terms of,
I guess his policy agenda. He served at the height
of the Cold War, and much of his foreign policy
direction was informed by that context. So a lot happened
with Cuba during that time, there was a lot about
communism and the USSR, so that was really the platform
(02:48):
that he was elected as president on. Then domestically, during
his time as president, JFK was a very strong advocate
for the civil rights movement, and his administration also had
this really strong focus on organized crime. So that's just
a really high level run through about who JFK was
now to the assassination. So on November twenty second, nineteen
(03:10):
sixty three, JFK was driving through Dallas, Texas in an
open top motorcade.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So if you're.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thinking in your mind, it's a car that has no roof,
and you know, today we can never imagine a president
driving through the streets with something like that, but at
the time that was a fairly normal thing to do.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
He was driving in.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The car with his wife, Jackie and with the then
Texan Governor John Connolly and his wife Nellie, and so
while driving down the street in the middle of the
day in Dallas. JFK was shot from the nearby Texas
Schoolbook Depository. That was at twelve thirty pm on that Friday.
By one pm, half an hour later, JFK was pronounced
(03:52):
dead and.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
The assassination was live stream. Would you call it live stream?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I don't know if we'd call it. It was captured,
was captured. There's a video, and.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
There's still footage that you can watch it.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, there's a truder film.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's the footage is wild.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's really so remarkable.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It wasn't released for some time after, or at least
the full video wasn't released for some time after the assassination.
But then when the world could see it for the
first time, it was, as you just said, so unbelievable
to watch an American president assassinated in in clear view.
It was unprecedented.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
The thing that I remember about it that has stuck
with me ever since I saw it is his wife,
Jackie turning around to kind of see if she can
catch his head.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Like it was just it's so visceral and yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You see Jackie kind of clamber back and then you
see the governor shield his wife and dark like you
see it all in real time.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, so, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That was something that was so unique about this and
I think having that footage goes to why there is
so much of an obsession as to what has happened
here and what has happened since. So back to November
of nineteen sixty three, a short time after JFK was shot,
a man called Lee Harvey Oswald, he was a US
Marine veteran. He was arrested nearby and he was arrested
(05:12):
for the alleged assassination of the president and also for
the murder of a policeman a short time after Kennedy
was shot.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So, just to be clear, the person who killed JFK
then went on to kill a policeman right after.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, so that's what we understand about what happened. This person,
as I said, his name was Lee Harvey Oswald. He
was arrested on that same Friday, and then on the
Sunday of that same week, so amir, two days later,
Lee Harvey Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from police
headquarters to the county jail. We referred to earlier the
(05:48):
fact that this was kind of the precipice of video
and people watching things for the first time, you know,
random tied. But but Kennedy and Nixon's presidential debate was
the first televised debate ever, and so people were watching
all of this unfolded in real time. And so as
viewers around the world were watching Lee Harvey Oswald being
(06:10):
transferred in police custody to this county jail, they suddenly
saw somebody at point blank range shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And kill him.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's just to think of this happening now, of a
president being assassinated, and then shortly after, two days after
the alleged assassin himself being shot. It was just this
like huge upheaval. And we later found out that the
shooter of Lee Harvey Oswald was identified as Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby was a night car bonner and he shot
(06:42):
Lee Harvey Oswold before Oswald could ever stand trial for
the assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, I mean, it's unthinkable to think about it happening today,
but it was also unthinkable at the time, and that's
why we are still talking about it more than sixty
years later because it was such a moment in history.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, it's one of those things that you know, you
ask your parents or your grandparents where they were when
they found out, and then when they were when they
found out that Oswald had been killed.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Just crazy.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Okay, So to recap, JFK was shot while riding in
an open top car through Dallas. Authorities arrested the shooter
and named him as Lee Harvey Oswald. As Oswald was
being transferred to jail, he himself was shot and he
was killed by a nightclub owner called Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Correct and even saying it today, you know, there are
so many twists and turns of this story, and it's
certainly one that has given rise to a whole host.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I'm sure our listeners aren't coming to this for the
first time, but really there is so much doubt around
the facts of what happened and how they played out.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
When I think of conspiracy theories, I think of JFK,
the assassination of JFK, the moon landing, and nine to eleven,
And this is this is one.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Of the big, very big of stories there.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Well, those are the three big stories, and this is
absolutely up there because I feel like what I know
about the JFK is I almost know about the conspiracy
theories before I know the actual details.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, you're right, like this is something that has remained
true for decades, even though there was this independent investigation
finding shortly afterwards that found no evidence of a domestic
or foreign conspiracy. Despite that, conspiracy theories have always run wild.
And I'm not going to go through all of them.
We would do a whole podcast on that, but I
(08:25):
do just want to add some insight I guess into
what the.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Nature of these theories are.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So a lot of them revolve around the direction of
the bullet that killed JFK. There's a lot that goes
into people not thinking that Leejaviosold was the only shooter
who was there that day, and who else could have
been involved and why could they have been involved. Some
of these theories point to Cuba and the role the
Cuban government could have potentially played. There are some conspiracy
(08:53):
theorists who believe that the Cuban government, who had a
very antagonistic relationship with the US government during the Kennedy administration.
These conspiracy theorists think that they found out about an
alleged assassination plot of the Cuban leader and therefore carried
out their own assassination plot of the US leader. There's
never been any evidence to suggest that is true, but
(09:14):
that is certainly one that keeps coming up. On the
complete other side of the spectrum, there are people who
believe that the CIA had something to do with it,
that it was this kind of inside job.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
The CIA being the Central Intelligence agency who's basically responsible
for surveillance and intelligence, the spy.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Agency in the US.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So this line of thinking is that it was something
potentially to do with organized crime, or it was something
to do with Russia, or who knows. There's so many
different ideas, but that this was basically an inside job
that had been covered up. And so while we can't
go through all of these theories, what I do just
want to say is there has always been this, I guess,
seed of doubt that has been sewn into the story
(09:54):
of the JFK assassination. And there have always been people,
people with very high profiles, who have suggested that what
they understand about the assassination might not be what actually happened.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And so the reason we're talking about it this week
is because well, if we go back to January, when
US President Donald Trump became president for the second time,
he signed in executive order to release the documents that
speak about the assassination and kind of all of the
documents that have been secret for sixty years now, and
then finally this week those documents were released.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean, it does make it out to be
a bit more of a blockbuster release than it actually was.
I'll just explain it's like pretty complex, but I just
want to go through I guess the history of these documents,
because this isn't the first time that we have had
documents relating to the assassination of JFK. So what happened
was and just bear with me on this. In nineteen
(10:48):
ninety two, Congress passed a law requiring the National Archives
and Records Administration to basically put together all the different
government records they had relating to JFK's assassination into place.
And at the same time that this law came into
effects requiring this, it also mandated that documents relating to
JFK's assassination had to be released within twenty five years,
(11:12):
except any documents that do identifiable harm to national security.
So this law came into effect in nineteen ninety two,
and it had this kind of twenty five year sunset clause,
So that twenty five year deadline came up in twenty seventeen,
when you might remember Donald Trump was also the president's
So at that time, Trump released.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Some of the papers as he was required to.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
He did though, say that he would put a hold
on releasing all of them to allow intelligence agencies more
time to deal with some of the complexities of it.
But at that time, in twenty seventeen, we got kind
of the first tranch of these documents. Then in twenty
twenty three, former President Biden released more documents, and at
that time he said it was final certification under the law.
(11:57):
That just means he was saying, no more documents are come.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We've released everything we can release. There's nothing more to
say or see here. But then fast forward to this year.
In January, and like you said, Trump issued an executive
order where he directed national security agencies to develop plans
to release all of the remaining government records relating to
the assassination of JFK, as well as the assassinations of
(12:21):
civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior, and JFK's brother RFK,
who was assassinated a mere five years after him. At
the time, a White House fact sheet said that more
than fifty years after these assassinations, the victims' families and
the American people deserve the truth. And so under the
executive order, JFK's files were to be released first, and
(12:42):
MLK and rfk's were to follow next.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And I know I just said so.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Many acronyms, but all you need to know is that
the Trancho documents that were released this week are by
no means the first time we've had documents on the
assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Okay, so that brings us up to this week. We
get the documents, it's like six four thousand pages or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It was meant to be eighty thousand pages, but we
only got sixty four thousand, oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And so what is in those documents?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, look, at a high level, I'm sorry to disappoint,
there's nothing earth shattering in them. There's nothing that you know,
provides any evidence to suggest there was a second shooter
or that it was an inside job. Like, there's nothing
here that confirms any of the conspiracy theories that we've
had kind of out there in the universe for the
last couple decades. What we did learn from the documents
(13:29):
was just some more information about Lee Harvey Oswald. For one,
we learned some more about the time he spent in
Mexico where he was attempting to get a visa into
Cuba before coming back to the US before the assassination.
That's given, I guess, some room for the people who
think that Cuba might be involved to be like, told
you so, but there's no real evidence they're linking anything substantially.
(13:52):
There were also some claims included in the documents that
CIA operatives knew about Oswald's plans prior to the assassination,
but mostly the documents really just revealed some details about
smaller incidents within the CIA. I was reading some analysis
that said, really, the people who will be most annoyed
by the release of this documents is just former CIA workers,
(14:14):
because it includes details about them and their jobs and
times they messed up at work, and not necessarily this
big sort of groundbreaking stuff. And more broadly, we did
just learn some more about the political landscape and how
US agencies were thinking that JFK's death might impact geopolitics
and their relationships with other countries. But given how much
(14:36):
hype there had been, historical analysts are saying, well, we
didn't really learn anything we didn't know before.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
One thing that did pique my interest was earlier this
week when I was doing their headlines in the afternoon
with Emma. Her angle on the story was that there
was this new Australian connection that we didn't really know
anything about.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So random.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Do you want to explain what happened there?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, Look, we don't have a heap of information. But
what we did find out was that the CIA investigated
anonymous phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra
just before and just after the assassination of JFK. And
so these documents show that the then as O boss
SO was talking about the boss of Australia's spy agency.
(15:20):
He wrote to the CIA and requested that the investigation
into those phone calls be kept a secret. So these
documents show that a there were these mysterious phone calls
that happened to the US Embassy in Australia, and b
that any investigation into why and how those phone calls
came to be that that had to remain a secret,
(15:41):
and so we found out that the CIA boss confirmed
that the investigation would not be made public, and it hasn't.
We've never found out why those phone calls happened or
what the connection to Australia might be.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
But so this is the first time that we found
out about those phone calls, correct. But now we don't
know nothing else.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
One of those things IA boss kept his promise, it
never got the public.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
So it's one of those things where it's kind of
raised more questions than it's answered.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I think that can be said truly for all of
these documents, so many of the people that were involved,
you know, in them, have since passed away or are
out of the workforce, or all of these sorts of
things where not many people are in a position to
give the answers that people might be wanting.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
So interesting, I wonder if you can do a freedom
of information request.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, really, I guess you'll have to do it. We'll
get back to you're the only one looking into it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
I wonder, And by just talking through how the Kennedy
family is still very involved in American politics, even Caroline
Kennedy was just the ambassador to Australia, So.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You were going to say, even she has sat in
this seat and been interviewed on this podcast, which she has.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
She has, but she's not the only person in the
Kennedy family who is still very involved in politics. So
do you want to take us through the members of
the family that are still in public life.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, I mean there are many, but I guess just
the two that I think are relevant to this store.
The first being RFK Junior. So we've spoken about him
on this podcast before. He's currently the Health Secretary. He
was appointed by Donald Trump. He endorsed Donald Trump at
the last election. He ran himself but then dropped out.
He's the nephew of JFK and he has long pedaled
(17:18):
conspiracy theories relating to the death of his uncle. So
he's one of those people that believes that the CIA
had something to do with his uncle's death. And shortly
after getting rfk's endorsement during the presidential race, Trump announced
that he'd make these files public.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
So there was like.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Some tenuous kind of connection between the two things where
he was saying, we've had RFK Junior publicly talk about
the fact that he thinks there's more out there, and
Trump saying I'll do everything I can to get that
information out there. But it has to be said that
not all Kennedys are on board with the release of
these documents. JFK's grandson, so the son of Caroline Kennedy,
(17:57):
the former ambassador to Australia, He's been very vocal in
his opposition. He wrote on X the truth is a
lot sadder than the myth. He's referring there to conspiracy theories,
a tragedy that didn't need to happen, not part of
an inevitable grand scheme. He then went on to write
this week, President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather, but
(18:18):
not in his life or what he achieved in it. No,
just like Robert Kennedy Junior, Donald Trump is only interested
in JFK's carcass. So very strong words there of some
members of the Kennedy family saying we're not learning anything new,
there's no conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Just let it be and let's move on.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
It's quite sad seeing this family dispute being played out
on the biggest stage possible.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It is, and I mean again, we could do a
whole podcast on the Kennedy family. But that is a
family that has experienced so much grief, so much loss,
all of it has played out in the public eye.
And now, as you said, now there's this kind of
family feued over their grandfather's legacy also playing out as
a political story. So I imagine, yeah, that this must
(19:03):
be a really difficult thing.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Well, Zara, thank you for taking us through it. Thank you,
and thank you so much for listening to this episode
of The Daily os. We'll be back again this afternoon
with your evening headlines. Until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Already and this is this is the Daily OS. This
is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
the twenty first of March. I'm Zara, I'm billy. This
week the US government released a huge bunch of documents
relating to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy
or JFK. He was assassinated decades ago, and yet questions
today remain about what actually happened on that day in
(00:38):
November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now there are thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Of pages that have been released, including things like confidential memos,
Department of Defense documents and more. The documents have also
called into question the unexpected role an Australian played in
the nineteen sixty three event.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Okay, Zara, So I think before we jump into this
story and explain why it's in the news cycle at
the moment, we should go back to the key details
around the assassination of JFK. And for those who you know,
I'm sure we've kind of all heard about it, But
for those who don't know the exact details, we should
go through those.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You mean, those that aren't as obsessed as I am.
I think my mum told me to stop buying books
on this because it was becoming weird.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I think it's one of the first things I learned
about you that you are absolutely obsessed not just with
JFK but also the entire Kennedy family.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Anyway, I hope that his grandson is not listening to
this because that would be embarrassing. But yees, this is
suddenly a story that I am interested in. But I
also think there's a lot of global interest in it,
and we'll get to that a bit later. You said
to just talk through the basic facts of what happened,
and I can go off what we understand. The thing
is that so many of these facts are contested, but
(01:54):
we'll go through what we know.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So firstly, John F.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Kennedy or JFK as we will refer to him for
the rest of the podcast. He was elected as the
President of the United States at the nineteen sixty election.
He was a Democrat, and he was also the youngest
ever elected president, coming to the highest office in the
country at the age of forty three. Just to give
you some context, Barack Obama was forty seven when he
(02:18):
was elected as president.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
And No one has been younger than him when coming
into office.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
No, not since that time.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So it was really this youthfulness that he brought and
really defined a lot of his presidency in terms of,
I guess his policy agenda. He served at the height
of the Cold War, and much of his foreign policy
direction was informed by that context. So a lot happened
with Cuba during that time, there was a lot about
communism and the USSR, so that was really the platform
(02:48):
that he was elected as president on. Then domestically, during
his time as president, JFK was a very strong advocate
for the civil rights movement, and his administration also had
this really strong focus on organized crime. So that's just
a really high level run through about who JFK was
now to the assassination. So on November twenty second, nineteen
(03:10):
sixty three, JFK was driving through Dallas, Texas in an
open top motorcade.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So if you're.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thinking in your mind, it's a car that has no roof,
and you know, today we can never imagine a president
driving through the streets with something like that, but at
the time that was a fairly normal thing to do.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
He was driving in.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The car with his wife, Jackie and with the then
Texan Governor John Connolly and his wife Nellie, and so
while driving down the street in the middle of the
day in Dallas. JFK was shot from the nearby Texas
Schoolbook Depository. That was at twelve thirty pm on that Friday.
By one pm, half an hour later, JFK was pronounced
(03:52):
dead and.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
The assassination was live stream. Would you call it live stream?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I don't know if we'd call it. It was captured,
was captured. There's a video, and.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
There's still footage that you can watch it.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, there's a truder film.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's the footage is wild.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's really so remarkable.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It wasn't released for some time after, or at least
the full video wasn't released for some time after the assassination.
But then when the world could see it for the
first time, it was, as you just said, so unbelievable
to watch an American president assassinated in in clear view.
It was unprecedented.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
The thing that I remember about it that has stuck
with me ever since I saw it is his wife,
Jackie turning around to kind of see if she can
catch his head.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Like it was just it's so visceral and yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You see Jackie kind of clamber back and then you
see the governor shield his wife and dark like you
see it all in real time.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, so, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That was something that was so unique about this and
I think having that footage goes to why there is
so much of an obsession as to what has happened
here and what has happened since. So back to November
of nineteen sixty three, a short time after JFK was shot,
a man called Lee Harvey Oswald, he was a US
Marine veteran. He was arrested nearby and he was arrested
(05:12):
for the alleged assassination of the president and also for
the murder of a policeman a short time after Kennedy
was shot.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So, just to be clear, the person who killed JFK
then went on to kill a policeman right after.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, so that's what we understand about what happened. This person,
as I said, his name was Lee Harvey Oswald. He
was arrested on that same Friday, and then on the
Sunday of that same week, so amir, two days later,
Lee Harvey Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from police
headquarters to the county jail. We referred to earlier the
(05:48):
fact that this was kind of the precipice of video
and people watching things for the first time, you know,
random tied. But but Kennedy and Nixon's presidential debate was
the first televised debate ever, and so people were watching
all of this unfolded in real time. And so as
viewers around the world were watching Lee Harvey Oswald being
(06:10):
transferred in police custody to this county jail, they suddenly
saw somebody at point blank range shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And kill him.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's just to think of this happening now, of a
president being assassinated, and then shortly after, two days after
the alleged assassin himself being shot. It was just this
like huge upheaval. And we later found out that the
shooter of Lee Harvey Oswald was identified as Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby was a night car bonner and he shot
(06:42):
Lee Harvey Oswold before Oswald could ever stand trial for
the assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, I mean, it's unthinkable to think about it happening today,
but it was also unthinkable at the time, and that's
why we are still talking about it more than sixty
years later because it was such a moment in history.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, it's one of those things that you know, you
ask your parents or your grandparents where they were when
they found out, and then when they were when they
found out that Oswald had been killed.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Just crazy.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Okay, So to recap, JFK was shot while riding in
an open top car through Dallas. Authorities arrested the shooter
and named him as Lee Harvey Oswald. As Oswald was
being transferred to jail, he himself was shot and he
was killed by a nightclub owner called Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Correct and even saying it today, you know, there are
so many twists and turns of this story, and it's
certainly one that has given rise to a whole host.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I'm sure our listeners aren't coming to this for the
first time, but really there is so much doubt around
the facts of what happened and how they played out.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
When I think of conspiracy theories, I think of JFK,
the assassination of JFK, the moon landing, and nine to eleven,
And this is this is one.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Of the big, very big of stories there.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Well, those are the three big stories, and this is
absolutely up there because I feel like what I know
about the JFK is I almost know about the conspiracy
theories before I know the actual details.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, you're right, like this is something that has remained
true for decades, even though there was this independent investigation
finding shortly afterwards that found no evidence of a domestic
or foreign conspiracy. Despite that, conspiracy theories have always run wild.
And I'm not going to go through all of them.
We would do a whole podcast on that, but I
(08:25):
do just want to add some insight I guess into
what the.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Nature of these theories are.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So a lot of them revolve around the direction of
the bullet that killed JFK. There's a lot that goes
into people not thinking that Leejaviosold was the only shooter
who was there that day, and who else could have
been involved and why could they have been involved. Some
of these theories point to Cuba and the role the
Cuban government could have potentially played. There are some conspiracy
(08:53):
theorists who believe that the Cuban government, who had a
very antagonistic relationship with the US government during the Kennedy administration.
These conspiracy theorists think that they found out about an
alleged assassination plot of the Cuban leader and therefore carried
out their own assassination plot of the US leader. There's
never been any evidence to suggest that is true, but
(09:14):
that is certainly one that keeps coming up. On the
complete other side of the spectrum, there are people who
believe that the CIA had something to do with it,
that it was this kind of inside job.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
The CIA being the Central Intelligence agency who's basically responsible
for surveillance and intelligence, the spy.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Agency in the US.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So this line of thinking is that it was something
potentially to do with organized crime, or it was something
to do with Russia, or who knows. There's so many
different ideas, but that this was basically an inside job
that had been covered up. And so while we can't
go through all of these theories, what I do just
want to say is there has always been this, I guess,
seed of doubt that has been sewn into the story
(09:54):
of the JFK assassination. And there have always been people,
people with very high profiles, who have suggested that what
they understand about the assassination might not be what actually happened.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And so the reason we're talking about it this week
is because well, if we go back to January, when
US President Donald Trump became president for the second time,
he signed in executive order to release the documents that
speak about the assassination and kind of all of the
documents that have been secret for sixty years now, and
then finally this week those documents were released.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean, it does make it out to be
a bit more of a blockbuster release than it actually was.
I'll just explain it's like pretty complex, but I just
want to go through I guess the history of these documents,
because this isn't the first time that we have had
documents relating to the assassination of JFK. So what happened
was and just bear with me on this. In nineteen
(10:48):
ninety two, Congress passed a law requiring the National Archives
and Records Administration to basically put together all the different
government records they had relating to JFK's assassination into place.
And at the same time that this law came into
effects requiring this, it also mandated that documents relating to
JFK's assassination had to be released within twenty five years,
(11:12):
except any documents that do identifiable harm to national security.
So this law came into effect in nineteen ninety two,
and it had this kind of twenty five year sunset clause,
So that twenty five year deadline came up in twenty seventeen,
when you might remember Donald Trump was also the president's
So at that time, Trump released.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Some of the papers as he was required to.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
He did though, say that he would put a hold
on releasing all of them to allow intelligence agencies more
time to deal with some of the complexities of it.
But at that time, in twenty seventeen, we got kind
of the first tranch of these documents. Then in twenty
twenty three, former President Biden released more documents, and at
that time he said it was final certification under the law.
(11:57):
That just means he was saying, no more documents are come.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We've released everything we can release. There's nothing more to
say or see here. But then fast forward to this year.
In January, and like you said, Trump issued an executive
order where he directed national security agencies to develop plans
to release all of the remaining government records relating to
the assassination of JFK, as well as the assassinations of
(12:21):
civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior, and JFK's brother RFK,
who was assassinated a mere five years after him. At
the time, a White House fact sheet said that more
than fifty years after these assassinations, the victims' families and
the American people deserve the truth. And so under the
executive order, JFK's files were to be released first, and
(12:42):
MLK and rfk's were to follow next.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And I know I just said so.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Many acronyms, but all you need to know is that
the Trancho documents that were released this week are by
no means the first time we've had documents on the
assassination of JFK.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Okay, so that brings us up to this week. We
get the documents, it's like six four thousand pages or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It was meant to be eighty thousand pages, but we
only got sixty four thousand, oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And so what is in those documents?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, look, at a high level, I'm sorry to disappoint,
there's nothing earth shattering in them. There's nothing that you know,
provides any evidence to suggest there was a second shooter
or that it was an inside job. Like, there's nothing
here that confirms any of the conspiracy theories that we've
had kind of out there in the universe for the
last couple decades. What we did learn from the documents
(13:29):
was just some more information about Lee Harvey Oswald. For one,
we learned some more about the time he spent in
Mexico where he was attempting to get a visa into
Cuba before coming back to the US before the assassination.
That's given, I guess, some room for the people who
think that Cuba might be involved to be like, told
you so, but there's no real evidence they're linking anything substantially.
(13:52):
There were also some claims included in the documents that
CIA operatives knew about Oswald's plans prior to the assassination,
but mostly the documents really just revealed some details about
smaller incidents within the CIA. I was reading some analysis
that said, really, the people who will be most annoyed
by the release of this documents is just former CIA workers,
(14:14):
because it includes details about them and their jobs and
times they messed up at work, and not necessarily this
big sort of groundbreaking stuff. And more broadly, we did
just learn some more about the political landscape and how
US agencies were thinking that JFK's death might impact geopolitics
and their relationships with other countries. But given how much
(14:36):
hype there had been, historical analysts are saying, well, we
didn't really learn anything we didn't know before.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
One thing that did pique my interest was earlier this
week when I was doing their headlines in the afternoon
with Emma. Her angle on the story was that there
was this new Australian connection that we didn't really know
anything about.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So random.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Do you want to explain what happened there?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, Look, we don't have a heap of information. But
what we did find out was that the CIA investigated
anonymous phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra
just before and just after the assassination of JFK. And
so these documents show that the then as O boss
SO was talking about the boss of Australia's spy agency.
(15:20):
He wrote to the CIA and requested that the investigation
into those phone calls be kept a secret. So these
documents show that a there were these mysterious phone calls
that happened to the US Embassy in Australia, and b
that any investigation into why and how those phone calls
came to be that that had to remain a secret,
(15:41):
and so we found out that the CIA boss confirmed
that the investigation would not be made public, and it hasn't.
We've never found out why those phone calls happened or
what the connection to Australia might be.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
But so this is the first time that we found
out about those phone calls, correct. But now we don't
know nothing else.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
One of those things IA boss kept his promise, it
never got the public.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
So it's one of those things where it's kind of
raised more questions than it's answered.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I think that can be said truly for all of
these documents, so many of the people that were involved,
you know, in them, have since passed away or are
out of the workforce, or all of these sorts of
things where not many people are in a position to
give the answers that people might be wanting.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
So interesting, I wonder if you can do a freedom
of information request.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, really, I guess you'll have to do it. We'll
get back to you're the only one looking into it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
I wonder, And by just talking through how the Kennedy
family is still very involved in American politics, even Caroline
Kennedy was just the ambassador to Australia, So.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You were going to say, even she has sat in
this seat and been interviewed on this podcast, which she has.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
She has, but she's not the only person in the
Kennedy family who is still very involved in politics. So
do you want to take us through the members of
the family that are still in public life.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, I mean there are many, but I guess just
the two that I think are relevant to this store.
The first being RFK Junior. So we've spoken about him
on this podcast before. He's currently the Health Secretary. He
was appointed by Donald Trump. He endorsed Donald Trump at
the last election. He ran himself but then dropped out.
He's the nephew of JFK and he has long pedaled
(17:18):
conspiracy theories relating to the death of his uncle. So
he's one of those people that believes that the CIA
had something to do with his uncle's death. And shortly
after getting rfk's endorsement during the presidential race, Trump announced
that he'd make these files public.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
So there was like.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Some tenuous kind of connection between the two things where
he was saying, we've had RFK Junior publicly talk about
the fact that he thinks there's more out there, and
Trump saying I'll do everything I can to get that
information out there. But it has to be said that
not all Kennedys are on board with the release of
these documents. JFK's grandson, so the son of Caroline Kennedy,
(17:57):
the former ambassador to Australia, He's been very vocal in
his opposition. He wrote on X the truth is a
lot sadder than the myth. He's referring there to conspiracy theories,
a tragedy that didn't need to happen, not part of
an inevitable grand scheme. He then went on to write
this week, President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather, but
(18:18):
not in his life or what he achieved in it. No,
just like Robert Kennedy Junior, Donald Trump is only interested
in JFK's carcass. So very strong words there of some
members of the Kennedy family saying we're not learning anything new,
there's no conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Just let it be and let's move on.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
It's quite sad seeing this family dispute being played out
on the biggest stage possible.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It is, and I mean again, we could do a
whole podcast on the Kennedy family. But that is a
family that has experienced so much grief, so much loss,
all of it has played out in the public eye.
And now, as you said, now there's this kind of
family feued over their grandfather's legacy also playing out as
a political story. So I imagine, yeah, that this must
(19:03):
be a really difficult thing.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Well, Zara, thank you for taking us through it. Thank you,
and thank you so much for listening to this episode
of The Daily os. We'll be back again this afternoon
with your evening headlines. Until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
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