Did a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald in GRIMSBY tip off Cambridge News about JFK shooting 25 minutes before assassination?
A TIP-OFF phone call warning of the assassination of US President John F Kennedy may have been made from GRIMSBY 25 minutes before the shooting.
New documents released by the US government today show the Cambridge News newspaper received a call shortly after 6pm on November 22, 1963, warning "Call the American Embassy in London for some big news".
Around 25 minutes later President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas.
It has been claimed the call was made by a British-born Soviet agent called Albert Osborne, who befriended killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
Mr Osborne travelled to Mexico City with Oswald to meet KGB agents two months before the assassination and travelled to his native Grimsby a few days later.
It is thought he made the call to the Cambridge News while staying at his sister's house in the Lincolnshire coastal town.
The dramatic message to the Cambridge News was revealed in a document written by the CIA released by the US government today. The name of the reporter who took the call was never revealed.
A story by the Cambridge News in 1981 unearthed by Sun Online reveals the reporter could have been the only journalist in the office at the time of the call and may have been sworn to secrecy by the CIA.
Archivist and Cambridge historian Mike Petty told Sun Online: "It remains something of a mystery. There appear to be a number of reporters who worked on the paper at the time who in 1981 had no recollection of the call.
"The stories didn't have bylines in those days either so it's not easy to find out now who wrote the story of Kennedy's assassination at the time."
Solicitor Michael Eddowes unearthed the document in 1979 and it was published by the Cambridge News in 1981.
He believed Osborne didn't call his local newspaper the Grimsby Telegraph as he didn't want to the call to be easily traced.
Speaking in 1981, Mr Eddowes said the call was made because the Soviet Union was eager that the assassination should be seen as a conspiracy.
He said: “They left every single lead … and this call was their final effort."
But newspaper staff speaking at the time poured scorn on the story and no mention of the tip-off was made in the Cambridge News' coverage in 1963.
Former editor Keith Whetstone, who was working at the paper at the time of the shooting, said in 1981: "It sounds like a completely fictitious story."
He added that he had traced 12 members of staff who worked at the paper in 1963 and none of them recalled the telephone call.
Former senior reporter Jock Gillespie, 75, said: "There is no way in hell that would have happened without being talked about.
"There are three or four of us that still get together, 'the old farts', and there's no way that wouldn't have been talked about - that would have never ever got past us.
"People I knew at that time wouldn't have shut up about that - it would have been published as well.
"That's been a windup - are you sure it isn't Cambridge Massachusetts they are talking about?"
Colin Moule, 82, started work at the news in 1952 and became the weeklies editor.
"In 1963 we were up at our new office in New Market Road. There would have been people working in the evening because we did work longer days, but we all couldn't believe it, because nobody could think who this reporter could be.
"And we checked with the reporters who were on duty and no-one had received the call."
Retired local government reporter Peter Hoskinson, 87, is sceptical as to why someone would tipoff the Cambridge News with such a big story.
"Why should it be us?" he said. "Surely they would have contacted a local paper in America?
"As far as I know nobody got the phonecall. I don't know anybody at all at the paper who remembers it happening."
Rodney Tibbs, 83, who was working as a reporter at the time, said: "The proof is that no story of that nature was ever published at the time. No such call was received as far as I'm concerned - You wouldn't just sit on a story like that.
Frederick Drayton Porter, who was Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police at the time of the shooting, added: "I had only just been appointed to Cambridge. If anything of that nature had come up I would have remembered it vividly."
The then Chief Inspector of Special Branch Frank Cox also stated: "I can remember that day in particular. I was off duty and came on at about 8pm.
"I am absolutely certain that nothing of that nature was reported."
Mr Eddowes died in 1992.
The CIA document stated: “An anonymous call was made to Cambridge, England, to the senior reporter of the Cambridge News. The caller said only that the reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news, and then rang off.
"After word of the President’s death was received, the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the call. Important thing is that the call was made, according to British calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot.”
Mr Osborne was born in 1888 in Grimsby and was one of 12 children. He was enlisted into the British Army in 1906 but resigned shortly before World War One and travelled to America.
He is believed to have died in hospital in San Antonio, Texas, in 1963.
Communist Oswald, who was arrested for shooting President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, attended the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on September 28.
He was shot dead by businessman Jack Ruby while being escorted to a Dallas prison by police two days later
The FBI files revealed Oswald met with Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, a senior KGB agent who was known to have worked for the KGB's 13th department - which was responsible for assassinations.
In another document, it is sensationally revealed that the FBI learned of the meeting on October 1 of that year - more than a month before the killing that shocked the world.
