26: This Australian Predicted JFK's Assassination | Canberra Chauffeur
Notes de l’épisode
Thirteen months before Dallas, a phone rang in the U.S. embassy in Canberra. A man claiming to be a Polish chauffeur for the Soviet embassy said Iron Curtain countries had put $100,000 on the president's head. The Americans wrote it up, filed it, and moved on.Then the president was shot. And the same voice called back.
This week we dig into one of the strangest footnotes in the declassified JFK files: an anonymous tipster in suburban Canberra who predicted an assassination over a year in advance, then rang the day after it happened to remind everyone he'd been right. Australian intelligence and the CIA spent years trying to run him down — and couldn't. No Polish national ever worked the Soviet motor pool. No plates matched. No name, no face, no paper trail. Just a voice, twice, exactly when it mattered.
- The first call: October 15, 1962 — a warning about a Soviet-financed hit, filed and nearly forgotten
- The second call: November 23, 1963 — the same voice, back within a day of the murder, naming Moscow's money
- The chauffeur problem: why ASIO and the CIA agreed Soviet embassies didn't hire local nationals as drivers — so who was he?
- The vehicle that wasn't there: a described car and plates that matched no registry, and the claim that Soviet officials kept spare plates on hand to swap on demand
Some of this is documented in black and white in the National Archives. Some of it — who this man actually was — may never be known.
This week, Rich Baker and Dr. Nick Coatsworth work through what the files really say, why a minor Cold War tip got flagged all the way to Helms' desk, and what it means that a mystery caller from Canberra got the timing right twice.
Contact the show at [email protected].
The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories — we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.
Contact the show at [email protected]
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