A former Cambridge News journalist says a colleague who allegedly took a mysterious phone call minutes before John F. Kennedy’s assassination may have been silenced by MI5.

Dominic O’Brien, who worked on the News in the 1960s, has made the claim about the unknown journalist who is said to have been tipped off about “big news” 25 minutes before the US President’s death on 22 November 1963.

A declassified document released last week in the United States showed the claim was made in a cable between the CIA and FBI, with details being included in a memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton.

Since the revelation attempts have been made to track down the reporter who allegedly took the call, but several living former News journalists have said they are skeptical about whether it was ever made.

The FBI cable reads: “The British Security Service (MI5) has reported that at 1805 GMT on 22 November an anonymous telephone call was made in Cambridge, England, to the senior reporter of the Cambridge News.

“The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy for some big news and then hung up. After the word of the president’s death was received the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call and the police informed MI5.

“The important point is that the call was made, according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot. The Cambridge reporter had never received a call of this kind before and MI5 state that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.”

One name for the reporter has been floated as a possibility, but cannot be verified until classified documents are disclosed by MI5.

Dominic, pictured above left, worked at the News from shortly after the assassination until 1973, and is now a columnist for the Aberystwyth-based Cambrian News.

He told his old paper: “The fact that I never, during those 10 years, heard anything about a mystery call taken by a reporter minutes before the shooting does not convince me that there was no such call.

“If there wasn’t, it would be necessary to come up with a plausible explanation for the fact that, four days after the shooting, FBI deputy director James Angleton sent a detailed memo to the bureau director saying there had been such a call and that, ‘according to MI5 calculations’, it had been made ‘about 25 minutes before the President was shot.'”

Dominic, 74, added: “At that time of day there would probably have been very few people in the newsroom. [Editor] Henry Higgins, and the news editor, Rodney Tibbs, would both have left for the day, as would newsdesk staff and the sub-editors, in all likelihood leaving at most one or two reporters writing up stories for the following day’s paper.

“The memo also says that the Cambridge reporter had never received a call of this kind before and MI5 state that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.

“It may be that this ‘loyal person’ was persuaded that it would be unhelpful if any reference to a call by then shown to have apparently given mysterious advance notice of a shocking and highly sensitive matter of international significance, and by then in the hands of MI5, found its way into print.”