A series of strange calls from a CIA informant known only as ‘the Polish driver’ were made from a Canberra hotel the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
The mysterious informant boasted about his connections with Russia’s ‘diplomatic establishment’ and said he was calling from ‘across’ the Kingston Hotel.
In one of the calls – which were made between August 9 to November 23 in 1963 – the informant ominously warned: ‘two men you are looking for are in Moscow’.
It’s understood he was referring to William Martin and Bernon Mitchell – two National Security Agency code breakers who defected to the Soviet Union a month later.
The informant also phoned the US embassy in Australia the day after JFK’s death ‘claiming to have knowledge about a Soviet plot to assassinate President Kennedy’.
A mystery CIA informant called the US Embassy from a Canberra hotel the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated (pictured, moments before) claiming to have knowledge about a Soviet plot to kill the president
The man, known only as ‘the Polish driver’, said he was calling from ‘across’ the Kingston Hotel (pictured now). It’s understood that was a coded reference to the nearby Soviet Embassy
The classified memos were released along with thousands of other intelligence files related to the killing of President Kennedy by the US National Archives after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered they be made declassified.
The CIA director’s office was quick to dismiss the Polish driver’s intelligence as fake at the time, but urged agents in the US Embassy’s Australian office to ‘do everything to identify him’ if he called again.
‘Agree anonymous caller looks like a crank but please continue to follow-up. If he calls again, do everything to identify him,’ the director was recorded as saying.
The informant began communicating with the US embassy on 9 August 1960.
He refused to reveal his identity but claimed he was ‘across from the Kingston Hotel’ in Canberra – likely a coded reference to the nearby Soviet Embassy.
The classified memos (pictured above) were released along with thousands of other intelligence files related to the killing of President Kennedy by the US National Archives after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered they be made declassified
The informant also alluded to the whereabouts of defected NSA agents William Martin and Bernon Mitchell (pictured left and centre)
In a string of bizarre communications across the years, he said his boss ‘Kurdiukov’ – the Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Australia at the time – was having ‘secret conferences in Moscow.’
Ivan Kurdyukov was a senior Soviet diplomat who was alleged to have a Soviet spy working for him at the embassy.
Kennedy was shot dead alongside his wife while on a political trip to Texas as tensions soared between the United States and Communist states in the Cold War.
The Polish driver phoned the US embassy the day after Kennedy’s death ‘claiming to have knowledge about a Soviet plot to assassinate President Kennedy.’
The FBI and Warren Commission found that former US marine Lee Harvey Oswald murdered Kennedy, but the newly released files have fueled long-standing theories the hit was ordered by the Soviet Union and Oswald was a KGB agent.
The newly released files have fueled long-standing theories the hit on Kennedy (pictured) was ordered by the Soviet Union and Oswald was a KGB agent