The Hidden History of the Kennedy Assassination
From charlesreid1
Contents
Quotes
Part 1
In addition, the New Orleans Mafia was one of the few mob families to conduct hits on government officials; the only others who dared to take such measures even occasionally were Trafficante’s Tampa mob and the Chicago Mafia, both allies of Marcello in drug trafficking and the JFK hit.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 77 - Loc. 1114-16 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:33 PM
One hundred was also the number of members in the New Orleans Mafia by October 15, 1890, when mob hit men shot the city’s Police Chief, David Hennessey, using a shotgun and a revolver. He died the following day, and though nineteen mobsters were indicted for the hit, all were acquitted thanks to witness intimidation and bribed jurors. In response to Hennessey’s assassination and the resulting acquittals, the public rioted and killed eleven of the Mafia men. But within two years, the New Orleans Mafia had fully recovered and was stronger than ever.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 78 - Loc. 1120-23 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:35 PM
Marcello quickly learned that it was better to have others commit his crimes, so he had two teenagers rob a grocery store. While Marcello was planning a follow-up crime with the two—another bank robbery—the teens were arrested. One of them told the authorities everything, and the police also arrested Marcello. In the future, Marcello would come to rely on only close family members and associates who could be trusted not to talk.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 79 - Loc. 1131-34 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:37 PM
Marcello became more powerful, wealthier, and more influential in the Mafia—and in Louisiana politics—with each passing year. At that time, officials ranging from US Attorney General Howard McGrath to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover publicly expressed skepticism that the Mafia even existed. However, Tennessee Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver knew the Mafia was a very real threat, so in 1950, as Chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, he began a well-publicized investigation. In addition to targeting national crime figures such as Frank Costello, Kefauver called Marcello “the evil genius of organized crime in New Orleans” and held hearings there, on the mob boss’s own turf. Kefauver possibly singled out Marcello not only because of New Orleans’s long-standing reputation for vice but also because of an article by prominent muckraking newspaper columnist Drew Pearson, who described the low-public-profile Marcello as “the crime czar” of the city.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 84 - Loc. 1213-20 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:50 PM
In the meantime, Marcello grew even more powerful under the new Republican administration of President Dwight Eisenhower and especially his vice president, Richard Nixon.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 85 - Loc. 1230-31 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:51 PM
Trafficante “had a standard operating procedure for murder, which included the importation of hired killers from out of town and setting up patsies to take the fall.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 87 - Loc. 1251-52 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:56 PM
Santo Trafficante spoke fluent Spanish and continued to spend time in Cuba as well as Tampa, with frequent visits to the “open” mob city of Miami. Because of his lack of a passport and US citizenship, Marcello could not easily or safely travel to Cuba, which by the 1950s was the Mafia’s gambling mecca for well-heeled travelers from the United States. Trafficante was one of the two main casino owners in Havana with the other being mob financial genius Meyer Lansky. Trafficante completely controlled one casino, the Sans Souci, and had shares in three more.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 87 - Loc. 1260-64 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:57 PM
For years it was thought that Marcello’s inability to travel to Cuba prevented him from holding a share in the mob’s Havana gambling industry, but as revealed here for the first time, that wasn’t the case. Decades later, in prison, Marcello made an admission to Jack Van Laningham, who reported that “he was partners with a man that ran the Mafia in Florida, [Santo] Trafficante, [and] they were [also] partners in a casino in Cuba, and made millions before Castro took over and shut them down.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 88 - Loc. 1265-68 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:58 PM
Mafia casinos in Cuba had flourished under the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose regime was embraced by Vice President Richard Nixon and tolerated by President Eisenhower. Nixon reportedly had business interests on the island with his mob-connected best friend, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. Nixon had visited the Mafia casinos and had been given honors by Batista. The repressive Cuban dictator had partnered with mob bosses like Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante, who gave him a lucrative piece of the growing Havana casino industry. Meanwhile, much of the Cuban populace suffered from bad nutrition, low wages, and Batista’s vicious police state.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 88 - Loc. 1269-73 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:58 PM
Surprisingly, the CIA and Trafficante played both sides, providing small quantities of arms to Fidel Castro and his men.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 89 - Loc. 1278 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 10:59 PM
The Administration’s tolerance of the Mafia was such that Trafficante felt safe to return to New York State for a meeting just two weeks later, along with almost a hundred other mob bosses from across the country. The ever-cautious Carlos Marcello didn’t attend and instead sent “his most trusted brother, Joe” and his top two Dallas lieutenants, Joseph Civello and Joe Campisi Sr. Their agenda ranged from replacing Anastasia to providing assistance for Batista and Fidel Castro. The mobsters met at a secluded country estate near the small town of Apalachin, New York. Marcello’s caution proved to be justified when local officers raided the unusual meeting, arresting fifty-eight mob leaders, including Trafficante and Joe Marcello. They were detained only briefly, but the huge meeting, combined with the recent sensational front-page news of Anastasia’s assassination, only served to fuel the frustration of many Americans—and some members of Congress—that the Mafia seemed to operate with near impunity under J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and the rest of the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 89 - Loc. 1285-93 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 11:01 PM
The assassination of Attorney General–elect Patterson generated huge headlines across the country. Though the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, had basically taken a hands-off approach to organized crime, National Guard General Walter Hanna pressured the Alabama Governor, who finally got Eisenhower to take action. Phenix City was placed under “Martial Rule” by the National Guard, putting the city under US military occupation. That drastic step finally ran the rackets out of Phenix City, though after a time they simply reorganized on a smaller scale across the river in Columbus, Georgia.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 91 - Loc. 1307-11 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 11:03 PM
One might think the Phenix City assassination would have caused the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration to declare war on organized crime, but it didn’t. J. Edgar Hoover continued to turn a blind eye toward the Mafia in general and Marcello in particular. Time magazine in 1975 first revealed secret meetings and friendship between Hoover and mob boss Frank Costello, which were confirmed by William Hundley, the Justice Department organized crime chief during the Kennedy Administration. Hoover’s predilection for gambling on horse races is now well known, and it’s also possible Hoover was blackmailed by the Mafia over his closeted homosexuality.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 92 - Loc. 1319-24 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 11:04 PM
Carlos Marcello’s partners had gotten away with murder, but they had lost the lucrative cash cow that was Phenix City. However, they learned from their mistakes, and the next time Marcello’s associates assassinated a government official, a patsy would be on hand to be quickly blamed and killed to divert suspicion from organized crime.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 92 - Loc. 1324-26 - Added on Monday, August 25, 2014, 11:05 PM
- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Bookmark on Page 93 - Loc. 1340 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:36 AM
Johnny Rosselli was very active in Guatemala in the mid-1950s, and his biographers documented from two sources that “Rosselli’s primary concern in Guatemala was to protect and advance the interests of” a New Orleans company with ties to Carlos Marcello. In 1956 Marcello decided that “Guatemala would be the most appropriate country” from which to obtain a fake birth certificate, since it “was easily accessible to New Orleans by air, telephone, and telegraph.” President Castillo Armas ruled the country, having been installed as dictator after the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration used the CIA to overthrow the liberal government of the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz in 1954. *- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 93 - Loc. 1338-43 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:36 AM
As Marcello later explained to Jack Van Laningham, he “tried to get into gambling in Vegas” using a front man, and “all was going good until the Nevada Gaming Commission learned that Carlos Marcello was involved. They were shut down and lost a great deal of money in the venture [and] he stayed clear of Vegas after that.” Marcello always tried to stay out of the limelight and the newspapers, and he could have all the gambling he wanted in Louisiana without worrying about a state Gaming Commission. Marcello stayed out of Las Vegas after that, even in the 1970s when he had a chance to put up money for the real casino depicted in Martin Scorsese’s film Casino. Instead, Marcello simply brokered that deal to the Kansas City mob, getting an enormous onetime (and untraceable) “finder’s fee” in the process, something the FBI learned but never revealed to the public.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 95 - Loc. 1369-75 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:40 AM
But unlike with Marcello, the US government didn’t realize Rosselli wasn’t a citizen, and it wouldn’t learn that until 1966, setting off a chain of events that would help trigger Watergate and lead to Rosselli’s gruesome 1976 murder on Trafficante’s orders, with Marcello’s support. But in 1957 the fifty-two-year-old Rosselli and the forty-seven-year-old Marcello still got along well.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 96 - Loc. 1378-80 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:40 AM
Willie Bioff—the key witness whose testimony had sent Rosselli to prison and ended his glamorous Hollywood lifestyle—was living in Phoenix and was good friends with Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Despite Bioff’s friendship with, and political support of, Senator Goldwater, Rosselli and the Mafia got their revenge: Bioff was killed when his truck exploded in his driveway at his Phoenix home on November 4, 1955, destroyed by “a dynamite bomb.” No one was arrested for the murder. Three years later Rosselli approved the murder of another good friend of Goldwater’s, Gus Greenbaum, owner of the Riviera casino and “mayor” of the Las Vegas strip.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 96 - Loc. 1382-87 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:41 AM
Rosselli may well have used his mutual associate with Marcello—Santo Trafficante—to provide the hit men. Employing out-of-town hit men was a technique both Trafficante and Marcello increasingly used since it was difficult to tie them to a crime and locale. Five years later all three men would employ a variation of that approach against JFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 97 - Loc. 1391-93 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:42 AM
Marcello’s main office had one other notable feature, “a sign on the door leading out” that according to his biographer gave visitors a chilling reminder of whom they “were dealing with”: THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET IF TWO ARE DEAD- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 99 - Loc. 1420-23 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:46 AM
There appeared to be no concerns for Carlos Marcello on the federal front since Richard Nixon enjoyed increasing power and respect as the 1950s advanced, due to a series of health issues plaguing President Eisenhower. Nixon had weathered the only two potential scandals he’d recently faced, aided in one case by his long-time patron, billionaire Howard Hughes. The other scandal involved exposure of the mob ties of attorney Murray Chotiner, Nixon’s closest advisor. Richard Nixon and Murray Chotiner had longtime and well-documented links to the Mafia. Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen admitted giving Nixon $5,000 (nearly $50,000 in today’s money) in Nixon’s first race for Congress in California, in 1946. Cohen upped that to $75,000 (almost $700,000 today) for Nixon’s 1950 Senate run. Chotiner, Nixon’s chief political aide and strategist from 1946 until the time of Watergate, had arranged those payoffs. Chotiner, an attorney, and his brother had represented 221 of Cohen’s bookmakers in just one four-year period.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 100 - Loc. 1436-44 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:48 AM
In 1957 Robert Kennedy teamed up with his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. They were investigating Teamster corruption starting with union president Dave Beck, the only major union leader to support the generally anti-union Eisenhower–Nixon ticket. After corruption charges forced Beck to step down, John and Robert Kennedy focused on his successor, Jimmy Hoffa.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 101 - Loc. 1452-55 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:50 AM
from newspaper headlines alone, there was clearly a need for someone to take on the Mafia in America since J. Edgar Hoover and the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration seemed so reluctant to do so. Starting in the late 1950s, John F. Kennedy took up that fight.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 102 - Loc. 1463-64 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:51 AM
his top Washington attorney, Jack Wasserman, one of the country’s best immigration attorneys. The fact that he chose Wasserman instead of a criminal defense attorney or a high-profile Washington power attorney showed that what Marcello feared most was his lack of citizenship. Unlike Santo Trafficante, Marcello couldn’t duck the Kennedys’ subpoena by traveling to another country. As a noncitizen, if Marcello ever left the United States he might be denied reentry, so Wasserman told him he had no other recourse than to report for the hearing. With his bow tie and glasses, Wasserman looked nothing like a typical mob lawyer and more like a university professor.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 105 - Loc. 1495-1500 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:54 AM
Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina—later chairman of the famed Senate Watergate Committee—began by reminding Marcello of his two felony convictions and then asked “how a man with that kind of record can stay in the United States for five years, nine months, twenty-four days after he is found to be an undesirable alien. . . . How have you managed to stay here?” Marcello eventually answered, “I wouldn’t know.” Senator Ervin expressed his frustration at the current Eisenhower–Nixon Administration, saying, “[T]he American people are entitled to more protection at the hands of the law than to have an undesirable alien who has committed serious felonies remain in this country.” He summed up by essentially calling Marcello a leech who preyed “upon law-abiding people [and who] ought to be removed from this country.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 107 - Loc. 1522-28 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:57 AM
On June 9, 1959, RFK verbally sparred with Sam Giancana, trying to draw him into a revealing response. RFK asked, “Would you tell us, if you have opposition from anybody, that you dispose of them by having them stuffed in a trunk? Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana?” Giancana appeared to stifle a laugh, not taking the Committee and RFK’s questions seriously, leading RFK to ask, “Is there something funny about it, Mr. Giancana?” and “Would you tell us anything about any of your operations, or will you just giggle every time I ask you a question? I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 108 - Loc. 1537-41 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:59 AM
As they sought to question additional mob leaders, Senator Kennedy and RFK were stymied on one occasion by the CIA, foreshadowing problems with the Agency that would plague the two men even after JFK become President. In a 1975 report for the New York Times that was confirmed by two RFK aides, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh discovered that in 1959 the CIA had given a “free pass” to one mob boss for his help in trying to assassinate Fidel Castro for the US government. When RFK and his aides tried to question him in private, the Mafia chief replied, “You can’t touch me. I’ve got immunity.” Robert demanded to know “who gave you immunity?” The Mafia boss replied, “The CIA. I’m working for them, but I can’t talk about it. Top Secret.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 109 - Loc. 1545-51 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 09:00 AM
To show he wasn’t afraid of the Kennedys or the Committee, Trafficante had ordered another mob hit the previous day, and Robert had to announce in the hearing that he had been informed “there was another one yesterday.” Like the others, it would never be solved- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 110 - Loc. 1566-67 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:19 AM
In Marcello’s organization, there was a man well suited for the role of messenger and courier between the two godfathers: Jack Ruby.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 111 - Loc. 1580-81 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:22 AM
Originally born Jack Rubenstein in Chicago on March 25, 1911, Jack Ruby dropped out of high school and began working for the mob. According to Seth Kantor—the respected journalist who saw Ruby at Parkland Hospital soon after JFK was shot—the young Ruby delivered “sealed envelopes at the rate of $1 per errand for Chicago’s No. 1 racketeer, Al Capone.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 112 - Loc. 1588-91 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:22 AM
By 1939 Ruby was back in Chicago as a “secretary to the Waste Handlers Union” and was questioned “in connection with the murder of the secretary-treasurer of the local.” Even though the victim was Ruby’s friend, he gave no useful information to the police, showing those in power that he could be trusted not to talk.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 112 - Loc. 1594-96 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:23 AM
This was the first of many times Ruby would appear to cooperate with authorities in return for protecting his—and his superiors’—criminal activities or to find out what authorities knew.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 113 - Loc. 1610-12 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:26 AM
Jack Ruby’s close relationship to law enforcement, a major factor in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, began to develop in the 1950s. It continued to grow into the early 1960s, when—according to one Warren Commission file—Ruby “was well acquainted with virtually every officer of the Dallas Police force.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 114 - Loc. 1618-20 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:26 AM
It’s clear now, and confirmed by Carlos Marcello’s own comments about Ruby during CAMTEX, that Ruby was Marcello’s pay-off man for the Dallas Police. The police corruption wasn’t just about money, since Ruby was soon involved in various nightclubs and with strippers and prostitutes. It was said that policemen never had to pay for a drink at Ruby’s club and sometimes were even provided with women.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 114 - Loc. 1622-25 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:27 AM
Ruby appears to have had a small role in making sure Marcello’s heroin that flowed through Dallas from Mexico and the Texas ports stayed en route to Chicago. Declassified files show that that same heroin network would play a role in JFK’s murder: One female heroin courier who worked for Ruby tried to expose the plot to assassinate JFK just prior to his murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 115 - Loc. 1635-37 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:28 AM
Also in the late 1950s, FBI files—most provided to the Warren Commission—show that Ruby became involved in gunrunning to Cuba with several associates of Santo Trafficante, among them gangsters Norman Rothman and Dominick Bartone, as well as corrupt former Cuban president Carlos Prio. Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen was also running guns to Cuba at that time, and “Ruby told one of his business partners . . . he was a close friend of Mickey Cohen.” The FBI documented numerous ties between Ruby and Cohen’s girlfriend, a well-known burlesque dancer from Texas whose stage name was Candy Barr.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 116 - Loc. 1643-47 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:29 AM
IN 1959 RUBY’S Cuban gunrunning and arms deals with Castro’s men made him an excellent candidate to be a courier/messenger between Ruby’s boss Marcello and the detained Trafficante. But Ruby had an even better cover for his activities because he’d recently become an informant for the FBI. In March of 1959, Ruby had been interviewed by the Bureau and asked to become an informant. Ruby, no doubt after checking with mob superiors in Dallas such as Civello or Campisi, agreed. Such an arrangement could give him an extra degree of protection for his illegal activities and a way to find out what crimes the FBI was interested in.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 116 - Loc. 1651-55 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:30 AM
In 1959 Ruby reported to the FBI “on at least eight occasions,” but according to historian Gerald D. McKnight, the Warren Commission hid that fact from the American public.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 117 - Loc. 1656-57 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:30 AM
While Trafficante was in jail in Cuba, Jack Ruby attempted arms deals to help secure Trafficante’s release, according to several accounts. Scott Malone found that “Congressional investigators” noted in a “briefing memorandum” that “in 1959 Jack Ruby traveled to Cuba and visited Santo Trafficante in jail.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 117 - Loc. 1669-71 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:31 AM
Ruby had many associates in common with Trafficante, but the most likely person to have taken Ruby to see Trafficante was gambling supervisor Lewis McWillie, whom Ruby described as “high class.” Even after the Revolution, McWillie was one of many mobsters still operating in Cuba. While most people think that Fidel Castro shut all the Mafia casinos when he took over, that’s only partially true. For economic reasons, they were quickly reopened. Frank Fiorini (who later renamed himself Frank Sturgis), a Trafficante hoodlum who’d fought alongside Fidel, was made the liaison between the Cuban government and the mob bosses who still ran—even if they no longer owned—the casinos. The former mob casinos would remain open until the fall of 1961.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 118 - Loc. 1676-81 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:32 AM
Ruby had one more unusual role to play in Cuba, in early 1960. The Hoffa-brokered plots between the CIA and the Mafia to kill Fidel that began in 1959 were continuing in the early months of 1960, though neither Trafficante nor Ruby’s boss Marcello had any documented role in those plots. However, former Cuban mob powerhouse Meyer Lansky had reportedly placed a million-dollar bounty on killing Fidel Castro, since, unlike Trafficante, Lansky had been unable to reach an accommodation with the Castro brothers.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 120 - Loc. 1700-1704 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:34 AM
A few journalists have asked if Jack Ruby was “supplying the pistols to McWillie so they could be [used in an assassination] plot against Castro.” Some evidence does indicate that the episode could have been part of the continuing plots to kill Fidel brokered by Hoffa between the CIA and the Mafia.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 120 - Loc. 1713-15 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:35 AM
One Colt Cobra definitely purchased by Jack Ruby in January 1960 would find greater infamy more than three years later. It was the pistol Ruby used to shoot accused assassin Lee Oswald on live television on November 24, 1963. Ruby’s notorious gun at the very least came out of his involvement with the Mafia and possibly from the mob’s early work with the CIA to kill Fidel.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 121 - Loc. 1721-23 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:36 AM
Ruby also owed large sums to the IRS throughout the early 1960s, first approaching $20,000 and by 1963 $40,000. In today’s dollars, that’s $240,000. Yet the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that Paul repeatedly loaned Ruby money, “which eventually may have totaled $15,000” plus an additional “larger sum of money (allegedly $15,000 to $17,000) to assist Ruby” with his taxes. In today’s dollars, that’s at least $180,000. Yet Ralph Paul was only the owner of a relatively small restaurant in Dallas, the Bull-Pen Drive-In, and it’s impossible to imagine he could have come up with those sums let alone continue to loan money to a man who owed the IRS so much money.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 122 - Loc. 1730-35 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:37 AM
House Select Committee investigators were confused when Joe Campisi said in an FBI interview that “Ralph Paul [was] his partner.” Campisi’s Egyptian Restaurant was large and popular, and Campisi was powerful, so he certainly didn’t need Ralph Paul as a partner. However, Joe Campisi’s comment makes perfect sense if he was funneling Marcello money to Paul as part of Paul’s fronting ownership of the Carousel for the mobsters.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 122 - Loc. 1742-45 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:37 AM
Still, by the later part of 1960, Ruby got to call the shots at the Carousel and act like a club owner, even though in reality he was simply taking a small percentage of the club’s revenues as a kind of salary for managing the club on behalf of Carlos Marcello. However, this arrangement would have huge ramifications for Marcello less than three years later, when it gave the godfather leverage to get Ruby to risk his life for the godfather after JFK’s murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 123 - Loc. 1746-49 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:38 AM
Eisenhower had left Washington the previous year when Fidel Castro had come to the United States, leaving it to Nixon to meet with the new Cuban leader. Instead of offering US financial aid as Castro had hoped (since the former US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista—a friend of Nixon—had fled with much of the Cuban treasury), Nixon had lectured Castro and offered no help. Nixon had also confided to others that he felt Castro was dangerous, and soon after that the CIA began working with Jimmy Hoffa to have the three northeastern mob leaders kill Fidel. Those plots had not worked, and now the 1960 election was rapidly approaching. Vice President Nixon apparently thought that if Castro was killed before the election, and US troops had to be sent into Cuba to protect Americans and American interests, the voting public would chose the eight-year veteran Vice President over the young and relatively inexperienced Senator Kennedy. Nixon told “a press aide [that] the toppling of Castro would be ‘a real trump card’” for the election, according to Anthony Summers.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 125 - Loc. 1762-69 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:40 AM
Robert Maheu (an ex-FBI agent and former partner of Guy Banister) later admitted that Richard Nixon was personally behind the ramped-up CIA–Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and that Nixon had chosen Maheu to be the CIA’s new cutout to the Mafia. Eight years later Maheu confided to his friend Pierre Salinger “that the CIA had been in touch with Nixon, who had asked them to go forward with this project. . . . It was Nixon who had him do a deal with the Mafia in Florida to kill Castro.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 128 - Loc. 1795-99 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:42 AM
ONE IMPORTANT PART of the CIA–Mafia plots that began in 1960 wasn’t connected to those plots until 2012. This was the fact that the mob bosses involved in the plots—including Marcello, Trafficante, and Giancana—paid a huge bribe to Vice President Richard Nixon the same month the plots began. Nixon’s background shows how that bribe came about and why Nixon turned to the Mafia to kill Castro in the first place.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 130 - Loc. 1823-26 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10:46 AM
Nixon also received support from his first race onward from billionaire Howard Hughes. Once Nixon became Vice President, he received even more favors and illicit money from Hughes. Twice Hughes had his top covert operative, Robert Maheu, help Nixon with difficult problems.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 130 - Loc. 1833-34 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:54 PM
“‘Santo,’ recalled his attorney Frank Ragano, ‘viewed Nixon as a realistic, conservative politician who was not a zealot and would not be hard on him and his mob friends. The Mafia had little to fear from Nixon.’”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 131 - Loc. 1836-38 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:54 PM
Marcello and Trafficante wanted to do all they could to ensure a Nixon victory, especially since their ally Jimmy Hoffa was soon expected to face a federal indictment as a result of all the attention the Kennedys’ hearings had focused on him. Accordingly, Marcello began to gather money for Nixon, and in addition to Trafficante, Giancana later claimed that he had contributed, as did Tony Provenzano, a Mafia Teamster official in New Jersey who was close to Marcello.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 131 - Loc. 1838-41 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:54 PM
In September 1960, Richard Nixon received a bribe of at least $500,000 from the same mob bosses who began working that month on his CIA–Mafia plot to kill Fidel. Prior to September 26, 1960, Teamster President Hoffa—facing an expected indictment for crimes exposed by the Kennedys—went to Louisiana “to meet Carlos Marcello.” As first revealed by Hoffa expert Dan Moldea, a Louisiana-based Hoffa aide, Grady Edward Partin, who later “turned government informant,” was with Hoffa at the meeting. Partin said, “Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash which was going to Nixon.” That was only half of a promised total payment to Nixon of $1 million (more than $6 million in today’s dollars), with “the other half coming from the mob boys in New Jersey and Florida.” The Florida mobster contributing was Santo Trafficante, who was at the time joining the CIA–Mafia plots. Among the “mob boys” in New Jersey was Mafia capo Tony Provenzano, who was close to Marcello. In a boast to a family member, Sam Giancana claimed that he was also part of the group “giving the Nixon campaign a million bucks.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 131 - Loc. 1842-50 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:55 PM
However, Marcello’s illicit cash for Nixon had another important goal: According to Grady Partin, Marcello said he “hoped . . . to extract a pledge that a Nixon administration would not deport him.” Marcello’s huge bribe to the Vice President also raises the possibility that an earlier payment to Nixon might have been the reason Marcello hadn’t been deported during Nixon’s Vice Presidency.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 132 - Loc. 1858-61 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:56 PM
That was really a primary reason the CIA wanted to use the Mafia in the first place, to give the public an entity other than the CIA or the US government to blame for the murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 133 - Loc. 1865-66 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:57 PM
Two plots to poison Fidel can be documented in the weeks leading up to the 1960 Presidential election. One involved Richard Cain, a “made” Chicago mobster who also worked in Chicago law enforcement. The other effort included Frank Fiorini, the mob associate who had fought for Fidel’s forces and then become the liaison between Fidel and the mobsters who ran (and had owned) the Havana casinos. But Fiorini had since fled Cuba and was now working for the CIA. Years later Fiorini would change his name to Frank Sturgis and become infamous as one of the Watergate burglars working for E. Howard Hunt. Though Fiorini’s mob and CIA ties have since been documented, those links would not become widely known during the Watergate scandal.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 133 - Loc. 1869-74 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:58 PM
- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Bookmark on Page 134 - Loc. 1877 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:58 PM
CIA officer E. Howard Hunt played a major role in the Agency’s covert plot to eliminate Fidel in the fall of 1960. If Castro was killed by mob assassins and US military forces were deployed to protect Americans in Cuba, it would take only a small group of trained exiles to help install another US-backed strongman or dictator. Hunt was helping oversee the political side of the training of such a small force (a few hundred men at that time). Though experienced with coups, at that point Hunt had no experience with the Mafia. To address that issue, in September 1960 longtime mob associate Bernard Barker was assigned as Hunt’s assistant, a position he would maintain for years.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 133 - Loc. 1875-80 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:58 PM
He originally had dual American–Cuban citizenship but because of his service in Cuba’s brutal and corrupt secret police, his US citizenship was revoked in the mid-1950s. Barker and Hunt say that Barker worked for the CIA for several years in the 1950s, though according to Barker’s released CIA file, he began working for the Agency only in the spring of 1959, when he was forty-one. After Barker left Cuba (and possibly before), he became a longtime associate of Santo Trafficante’s mob, though an FBI memo says that since “the late 1940’s” Barker had been involved “in gangster activities in Cuba.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 134 - Loc. 1881-85 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 06:59 PM
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover got wind of the secret plots, as verified by an October 18, 1960, memo to a high CIA official overseeing the plots, in which Hoover said that “during recent conversations with several friends, [Sam] Giancana [said] the ‘assassin’ had arranged with a girl, not further described, to drop a ‘pill’ in some drink or food of Castro’s.” Hoover’s description perfectly matches other descriptions of Frank Fiorini’s part of the CIA–Mafia plot.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 134 - Loc. 1885-89 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:00 PM
That the son of one of America’s richest men would need Giancana’s help to win in heavily Democratic Chicago, whose powerful Mayor, Richard Daley, was JFK’s close ally, strains credibility.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 135 - Loc. 1892-93 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:00 PM
Despite those stories in the press, the Agency continued the CIA–Mafia assassination plots into December of 1960 and into 1961 without telling the new President. December 1960 was an especially active time. That month New Orleans private detective Guy Banister was linked to a CIA plot to stage a fake attack on the US naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba, to provide a pretext for a US attack on Cuba. However, Cuban authorities got wind of the plot and arrested forty Cubans involved.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 135 - Loc. 1901-4 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:01 PM
In addition, “in late 1960, the Agency sent a sniper rifle to Havana via diplomatic pouch,” according to CIA Congressional testimony uncovered by historian David Kaiser.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 136 - Loc. 1909-10 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:01 PM
As the CIA would reluctantly admit years later in Congressional hearings, it had begun a program in 1960 to eliminate problematic foreign leaders, ominously named ZR/RIFLE. The CIA was also using ZR/RIFLE to try to assassinate another foreign leader, the charismatic Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, an attempt that succeeded shortly before JFK was sworn in. Involved in that assassination effort was a European assassin recruiter for the CIA code-named QJWIN. As detailed later, QJWIN would also be used in the plots to kill Fidel Castro and would surface in relation to JFK’s murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 136 - Loc. 1912-16 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:02 PM
The secret CIA exile training going on outside New Orleans gave Guy Banister and David Ferrie opportunities to become involved in the covert operation. In an unusual foreshadowing of events to come, it’s well documented that one of Banister’s associates even used the name “Oswald”—then in the Soviet Union—as an alias when trucks were purchased for Cuban exiles at a New Orleans Ford dealership. One of Banister’s associates involved had briefly employed Oswald when he was a teenager, which is probably why the name of the well-publicized defector was used.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 138 - Loc. 1935-39 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:04 PM
More important, as New Orleans became a center of covert Cuban exile activity—a role that would continue into 1963—Marcello became involved in those operations.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 138 - Loc. 1939-40 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:04 PM
Officially, Hunt worked with exile leaders such as Tony Varona and Manuel Artime (Hunt’s best friend), who were supposed to run Cuba after Fidel was gone. However, the CIA admits that Varona was also working at the same time on the CIA–Mafia plots with his associate Santo Trafficante, as was Artime. Much evidence shows the same was true for Hunt and Barker, who were also involved in the CIA–Mafia plots since the new exile leadership of Cuba would have to be ready to take over as soon as the Mafia assassinated Fidel. Barker’s work for Trafficante could help that coordination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 138 - Loc. 1944-48 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:05 PM
Confirmation of Hunt’s CIA work with Rosselli in March 1961 came only in 2006, when former CIA Agent Bayard Stockton wrote that “in March 1961 [Johnny] Rosselli went to the Dominican Republic, accompanied by Howard Hunt of the CIA.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 139 - Loc. 1949-51 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:05 PM
Even as the CIA Director ignored Commander Almeida’s comments and kept them—and the CIA–Mafia plots and fake Guantánamo attack plans—secret from JFK, President Kennedy expressed his dissatisfaction with the CIA’s proposed landing site near the city of Trinidad.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 140 - Loc. 1968-70 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:07 PM
Accordingly, the CIA chose a new beachhead on Cuba’s southwest coast in an area called the Bay of Pigs. In a tragic irony of history, when Fidel divided command of Cuba into thirds for defense against the anticipated invasion, Commander Almeida was given control of the portion of Cuba that included the Bay of Pigs. If the CIA had told JFK about Almeida, who could have been encouraged to remain in place and assist the United States, history could have been radically different.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 140 - Loc. 1971-75 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:07 PM
Tunisian-born Marcello, who wasn’t a citizen and had only falsified birth records from Guatemala.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 140 - Loc. 1977-78 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:08 PM
On April 4, 1961, when Carlos Marcello went to the local INS office for what he thought was a routine visit, he was detained and then flown to Guatemala without a hearing. RFK publicly took full responsibility “for the expulsion of” Marcello and the following week had the IRS file “tax liens in excess of $835,000 against” Marcello and his wife.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 141 - Loc. 1980-82 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:08 PM
The US-backed dictator of Guatemala, already under pressure from his country’s press and populace for allowing the US-supported Cuban exile training, faced new scrutiny for allowing a notorious American godfather to reside in the country. He ordered Marcello and his American attorney detained and escorted to the border. From there Marcello was taken “20 miles into Honduras [and] unceremoniously dumped . . . on a forested hilltop with no signs of civilization in sight.” The man who was America’s most powerful godfather now had to scramble through the jungle-lined back roads of Honduras in his expensive Gucci shoes.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 141 - Loc. 1985-89 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:09 PM
According to Marcello biographer John Davis, “Still wearing their city clothes and their city shoes stuffed with cash,” Marcello and his associate “had little to drink or eat. . . . Marcello found breathing difficult along the mountain-top road. He collapsed three times in the dust, complaining that he could not go on any farther, that he was finished, and that it was that rich kid Bobby Kennedy who had done this to them. ‘If I don’t make it . . .’ Carlos told [his associate] at one point as he lay exhausted in a roadside gutter, ‘tell my brother when you get back, about what dat kid Bobby done to us. Tell ’em to do what dey have to do.’” Before arriving at a small airport, the exhausted Marcello plunged “down a pathless slope. They ended up in a burrow, bleeding from thorns, bruised by rocks, with Marcello complaining of a severe pain in his side” from “three broken ribs.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 141 - Loc. 1989-96 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:10 PM
The link between the September 1960 Mafia–Nixon bribe and the fact that most of those contributing—Marcello, Trafficante, and Giancana—were also working at the behest of Nixon on his CIA–Mafia plot to kill Fidel was not publicly made until the publication of my book Watergate: The Hidden History in 2012.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 142 - Loc. 2006-8 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:11 PM
Shortly before President Kennedy took office, Eisenhower had closed the US Embassy in Havana, depriving the United States—and President Kennedy—of a valuable listening post (and spy base) in Cuba. This lack of clandestine information from observers on the scene left JFK almost completely at the mercy of CIA officials regarding the situation in Cuba.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 143 - Loc. 2017-19 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:12 PM
Even without Hunt, the CIA–Mafia plots continued, with Cuban exile leader—and Trafficante associate—Tony Varona playing a key role.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 144 - Loc. 2023-24 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:14 PM
However, the abrupt departure of Hunt—who handled exile leaders like Varona—left only a few officials who knew about the highly secret CIA–Mafia plots. Because Hunt was no longer involved, Varona was placed in a secure US military facility with the other exile leaders to await the outcome of the invasion and was unable to give the signal to poison Castro. That still left Dulles the fake attack plan on Guantánamo, set to be staged by the exiles trained near New Orleans.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 144 - Loc. 2025-29 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:14 PM
They were there to risk their lives fighting Castro’s troops, not the US military.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 144 - Loc. 2032-33 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:14 PM
The failure of those two operations, along with the lack of real secrecy about the operation and the CIA’s refusal to take advantage of Cuban Army Commander Almeida’s offer, primarily caused the Bay of Pigs disaster. JFK publicly took responsibility, but privately he was furious. Internal investigations followed, though they would not uncover the CIA–Mafia plots, the fake Guantánamo attack, or Commander Almeida’s offers. However, CIA Director Dulles and his second-in-command were eventually forced to- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 144 - Loc. 2033-37 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:15 PM
resign.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 145 - Loc. 2037 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:15 PM
Years later, after Watergate, Frank Fiorini—tired of the CIA’s spin that Hunt was a minor, bumbling CIA figure—said in a published interview that “Howard [Hunt] was in charge of other CIA operations involving ‘disposal’ [assassination] and . . . some of them worked.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 145 - Loc. 2044-46 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:16 PM
The FBI was fairly certain Marcello had been flown to Miami on a Dominican air force jet. An FBI memo later uncovered by John Davis suggests that “a high-ranking US government official may have intervened with the Dominican Republic on Marcello’s behalf,” identifying a key player as “Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, who had received financial aid from Marcello, [and who] had been very much concerned with the Marcello deportation.” Long would later serve on the Warren Commission.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 146 - Loc. 2055-58 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:17 PM
That may be why Helms wouldn’t tell McCone about his use of the Mafia even when Helms began to expand the plots. To a later Senate committee, John McCone “testified that he was not briefed about the assassination plots by Dulles, Bissell, Helms, or anyone else,” something Helms confirmed in his own testimony. Also kept in the dark about the plots’ continuation were President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 147 - Loc. 2074-77 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:19 PM
Those plots would play a central role in helping Marcello and his partners kill JFK in a way that would force high CIA officials such as Richard Helms to cover up crucial information after JFK’s assassination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 148 - Loc. 2080-81 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:20 PM
The prosecution of Cain’s associate had to be suppressed to avoid exposing the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Castro, which meant that RFK would have to be told something about the plots. On May 7, 1962, the CIA’s General Counsel and the Agency’s Director of Security told an angry Robert Kennedy about the CIA–Mafia plots from October 1960 to the Bay of Pigs and even into early 1962. However, the two assured RFK that the plots had been stopped. There are indications that a year earlier, RFK had learned in general terms about the CIA’s use of Giancana in some capacity during the Bay of Pigs, but it’s unclear whether he knew that Giancana was involved in assassinations or thought he was just helping to provide intelligence. In any event, the CIA admits that RFK was not told the plots were continuing even after he was assured they were over.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 148 - Loc. 2088-95 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:21 PM
With lawyerly understatement, the CIA’s General Counsel, Lawrence Houston, later testified, “If you have seen Mr. Kennedy’s eyes get steely and his jaw set and his voice get low and precise, you get a definite feeling of unhappiness.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 149 - Loc. 2095-97 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:21 PM
A frustrated Robert Kennedy said that because of the CIA, “It would be very difficult to initiate any prosecution against Giancana, as Giancana would immediately bring out the fact the US Government had approached him to arrange for the assassination of Castro.” That was a serious matter for Robert Kennedy, since the Chicago Mafia had been a particular target of his ever-increasing war against organized crime, along with Trafficante’s empire in Florida and Marcello’s organization in Louisiana.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 149 - Loc. 2097-2101 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:22 PM
In 1960 Sinatra had also introduced JFK to Judith Campbell, who later became his mistress. Shortly before JFK ended his friendship with Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover sent “a top-secret memorandum to” Robert Kennedy “that summarized Judith Campbell’s telephone contact with the President as well as her association with Sam Giancana. A copy of the memo also went to a top JFK aide, with a cover note: ‘I thought you would be interested in learning of the following information which was developed in connection with the investigation of John Rosselli.’” * This event led to “Hoover’s lunch with the President on March 22, [1962],” which a JFK aide described as “bitter” and “which went on for no less than four hours.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 150 - Loc. 2109-14 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:23 PM
The fact that President Kennedy ended his relationships with two of Johnny Rosselli’s close friends was a critical blow to Marcello and Trafficante. Campbell and Sinatra had potentially represented ways that John or Robert Kennedy might have been pressured—or blackmailed—to back off from their massive assault on the Mafia. Now the mob bosses had few options to stop the Kennedys’ ever-increasing pressure on them.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 150 - Loc. 2119-22 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:24 PM
The Northwoods proposals shocked President Kennedy, and he rejected them all. The plan apparently showed JFK that some of the Joint Chiefs—especially its Chairman, General Lemnitzer—were very much out of touch with JFK’s view of the world. Within months, JFK replaced Lemnitzer with General Maxwell Taylor, who had headed JFK’s Bay of Pigs investigation. General Taylor would remain Chairman of the Joint Chiefs throughout JFK’s Presidency and was so admired by RFK that he named one of his sons after him.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 152 - Loc. 2148-52 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:26 PM
At first no one knew whether or not the Soviet missiles had nuclear warheads, but by September 19 evidence that they did had started accumulating. On September 27 the US military began preparing contingency invasion plans for Cuba. JFK was briefed on October 16 that “hard photographic evidence” from a U-2 spy plane flight confirmed that Soviet medium-range nuclear ballistic missiles were being installed in Cuba. He made plans to reveal the Crisis to the nation six days later, after having daily consultations with a full range of top military and civilian advisors. On October 22, 1962, at 7 p.m. (eastern time), President John F. Kennedy went on national television to tell the American people the country was on the brink of nuclear war.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 153 - Loc. 2156-62 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:27 PM
As the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded during those tense times, it’s important to remember that this is when recently returned “defector” Lee Oswald was allowed to take the job at the U-2 map firm in Dallas. The firm’s sensitive work would be visible on television throughout the Crisis, which makes it incredible that Oswald would be allowed to work there unless he had US intelligence connections.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 154 - Loc. 2165-67 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:28 PM
- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Bookmark on Page 155 - Loc. 2189 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:29 PM
Jimmy Hoffa, who had a number of criminal activities with Marcello and Trafficante, was under such intense pressure from the Kennedys that he decided to kill Robert Kennedy. In September 1962 Edward Partin, the Justice Department informant who had witnessed Marcello’s $500,000 bribe to Hoffa for Nixon, approached officials about becoming an informant after he heard Jimmy Hoffa discuss plans to assassinate Attorney General Kennedy. Partin had passed “a meticulous FBI polygraph examination” and had provided to RFK’s Justice Department a stream of information about Hoffa’s crimes.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 155 - Loc. 2188-92 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:30 PM
Not content to depend on the aging and imperious Hoover, RFK had hired ten times more Justice Department Mafia prosecutors than were employed during the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration. The Kennedys’ pressure on Marcello, and on his close partners Santo Trafficante and Jimmy Hoffa, was unrelenting. Something had to be done.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 156 - Loc. 2208-10 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:31 PM
Becker told the godfather that killing RFK would get Marcello “into a hell of a lot of trouble.” In answer, “Marcello invoked an old Italian proverb: ‘If you want to kill a dog, you don’t cut off the tail, you cut off the head.’” Becker says the implication was that “Bobby was the tail” and “if the President were killed then Bobby would lose his bite. Marcello added that he had a plan, to use ‘a nut’ to take the fall for the murder . . . then Marcello abruptly changed the subject, and the Kennedys were not mentioned again.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 158 - Loc. 2221-25 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:33 PM
In October 1962, Marcello briefly and unexpectedly explained his solution to the Kennedys’ war on the Mafia. The godfather was with two of his most trusted associates in the place he felt safest, the middle of his secluded sixty-four-hundred-acre Churchill Farms property outside New Orleans. With Marcello were his trusted longtime driver, Jack Liberto, and his favorite nephew, Carlo Roppolo. Joining the three was Ed Becker, a former public relations man for two Las Vegas casinos. Marcello felt comfortable talking to Becker not only because he’d worked for mob-run casinos but because Becker was now in business with Roppolo, who vouched for him. According to Becker, Marcello “pulled out a bottle and poured a generous round of scotch. The conversation wandered until Becker made an off-hand remark about Robert Kennedy and Marcello’s deportation. The reference struck a nerve, and Carlos jumped to his feet, exclaiming the Sicilian oath, ‘Livarsi na pietra di la scarpa!’ (Take the stone out of my shoe!).” Marcello didn’t speak Sicilian but was repeating an old saying he had heard many times from those who did. * As Becker later wrote, “Reverting to English, Marcello shouted, ‘Don’t worry about that Bobby son-of-a-bitch. He’s going to be taken care of.’” Becker told the godfather that killing RFK would get Marcello “into a hell of a lot of trouble.” In answer, “Marcello invoked an old Italian proverb: ‘If you want to kill a dog, you don’t cut off the tail, you cut off the head.’” Becker says the implication was that “Bobby was the tail” and “if the President were killed then Bobby would lose his bite. Marcello added that he had a plan, to use ‘a nut’ to take the fall for the murder . . . then Marcello abruptly changed the subject, and the Kennedys were not mentioned again.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 157 - Loc. 2211-25 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:33 PM
Many people knew that Robert Kennedy and Vice President Johnson hated each other, and one of them was the politically savvy Marcello, who “owned” US Senators, members of Congress, governors, and judges. If Marcello killed President Kennedy, then RFK’s status as the second-most-powerful man in America—with far more power than a typical Attorney General—would end, and with it so would RFK’s extraordinary war on Marcello and the Mafia.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 158 - Loc. 2225-29 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:33 PM
“Aleman said that Trafficante” made the threat against JFK as “part of a long conversation that lasted from sometime during the day until late at night.” Aleman said the conversation with Trafficante “came about because” his cousin had helped get “someone out of a Cuban jail,” and Trafficante “wanted to help Aleman get out of his financial difficulties in return.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 159 - Loc. 2250-53 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:40 PM
Trafficante complained about JFK: “[H]ave you seen how his brother is hitting Hoffa . . . mark my word, this man Kennedy is in trouble and he will get what is coming to him.’ When Aleman disagreed with Trafficante and said he thought . . . Kennedy would be re-elected,” Trafficante said, “You don’t understand me. Kennedy’s not going to make it to the election. He is going to be hit.” Aleman told the government investigators “that Trafficante ‘made it clear . . . he was not guessing about the killing, rather he was giving the impression that he knew Kennedy was going to be killed.’”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 160 - Loc. 2261-65 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:41 PM
Williams was near death when Castro’s army brought him to a makeshift field hospital. What happened next became the stuff of legend among Cuban exiles. As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Haynes Johnson wrote, Williams and the other wounded men in a makeshift field hospital “were suddenly confronted by the person of Fidel Castro.” The badly wounded “Williams . . . recognized him at once. He groped under his thin mattress and tried to reach a .45 pistol he had concealed there earlier in the afternoon.” As Williams told me, and as other exiles confirmed to Haynes, Williams gathered enough strength to point the weapon at Castro and—at almost point-blank range—to pull the trigger. But the weapon only clicked—it was empty. Earlier, William’s compatriots had worried that he might be in such pain from his wounds and so depressed over the failure of the invasion and their capture that he might use the gun on himself, so they removed the bullets while Williams was unconscious. Castro’s men quickly set upon Williams, but Fidel ordered them not to harm the gravely injured man and instead ordered that Williams and the other wounded men be taken to a hospital in a nearby city. There, an old friend, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, visited Williams. Almeida was no doubt frustrated that the United States had never acted on his clear signals of dissatisfaction with Castro. Commander Almeida told Williams that the time for action against Fidel was not right, that he was too powerful in the wake of his victory at the Bay of Pigs.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 164 - Loc. 2318-29 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:47 PM
JFK, RFK, their aides, and Williams were successful, and $53 million in food and medicine was transferred to Cuba. On Christmas Eve, the 1,113 prisoners returned to Miami. The Orange Bowl hosted a lavish ceremony for all the freed prisoners and their families, during which JFK made an impromptu pledge, promising to return the brigade’s flag to them “in a free Havana.” For President Kennedy, those weren’t just words. Operation Mongoose was officially over, but six months later, JFK, RFK, and Williams would have a new plan to topple Fidel, one that would trigger much of the secrecy that still surrounds JFK’s assassination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 166 - Loc. 2339-43 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:48 PM
Even though the official record shows that Oswald moved to New Orleans on April 24, 1963, he had made at least one trip to the city well before that date, according to Congressional testimony cited in Chapter Two . The testimony was first obtained in 1975, meaning that critical information was not available to the Warren Commission. Oswald’s visit had occurred in March, February, or perhaps as early as January. His trip there involved some sort of Cuba-related activity, resulting in his being jailed in New Orleans and claiming to the INS to be a Cuban exile, even though he couldn’t speak Spanish. Within a few months, numerous witnesses would place Oswald as working with Guy Banister and David Ferrie.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 168 - Loc. 2365-70 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:50 PM
In early 1963—as Marcello and Trafficante were making plans to assassinate JFK—two related Congressional committees were looking into the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and into mail-order gun sales by the very firms from which Oswald ordered. Not only were both hearings in the newspapers of the time—making it easy to see where Banister or his associates got the idea to take advantage of them—but members of both Congressional committees had ties to Trafficante operatives Frank Fiorini and John Martino. Martino, who had finally been released from his Cuban prison the previous fall, was very bitter over his experience, blaming the Kennedy Administration for not securing his release sooner. In addition to his work for Trafficante, in 1963 Martino also became close to Johnny Rosselli, and the CIA admits that Martino—like Rosselli—became a CIA asset. Also like Rosselli (and Marcello and Trafficante), late in life Martino admitted his involvement in the JFK assassination plot.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 169 - Loc. 2383-90 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:51 PM
As for the shooting at General Walker’s home, Banister belonged to the same white supremacist circles as General Walker, and associates of the two had been at a white supremacist conference in New Orleans just four days before someone shot into Walker’s home. Any role Oswald had in that incident was probably at Banister’s behest, an effort to plant evidence that would make Oswald look murderously violent after he was arrested for JFK’s assassination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 170 - Loc. 2399-2402 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:52 PM
A closer look at the timing of all these events shows just how intertwined they were and reveals other links to the Mafia’s role in JFK’s assassination. First, here’s a brief summary: Someone using the alias Alek Hidell and Oswald’s post office box in Dallas ordered a .38-caliber pistol on January 28 from a Los Angeles company and ordered a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from a Chicago firm on March 12, 1963; both weapons were shipped the same day, March 20. On March 31 Oswald’s wife, Marina, photographed him in his backyard holding both weapons and the two Communist newspapers. * In the first week of April, Oswald was fired from his job at the U-2 map firm in Dallas, and he wrote his first letter to the head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. On April 10 a bullet was fired into the Dallas home of General Walker. On April 24 Oswald moved to New Orleans, where he initially lived with his uncle, a bookie for Carlos Marcello.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 170 - Loc. 2402-9 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:53 PM
Hurt points out that under the laws at the time, “there would have been no record of his purchase and ownership” had he bought the guns at a store, as there would be for mail-order guns. By using the mails, Oswald appears to have deliberately left much more of a trail than if he had made the same purchase by spending a few minutes at a busy gun shop’s counter.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 171 - Loc. 2413-16 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:53 PM
Oswald may well have thought that if he followed the orders of Banister and Ferrie, he might someday be testifying before Congress like his boyhood hero from I Led Three Lives. Under that scenario, Oswald would think he was assisting the committees—by showing that a former Russian defector and a Fair Play for Cuba Committee member could easily order a rifle and pistol through the mail—when in actuality he was being set up.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 172 - Loc. 2425-28 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:54 PM
The shooting at General Walker’s was termed “an assassination attempt” by Walker and the Warren Commission, and when word of it emerged soon after JFK’s assassination, it seemed to some to clinch the case against the deceased Oswald. However, Walker’s background, the evidence, and the actions of Marcello associates such as Oswald and Ruby suggest a different interpretation of the shooting. General Walker became controversial in 1961 when JFK removed him from command of the Twenty-fourth Infantry Division in Germany for indoctrinating his soldiers with inflammatory material from the John Birch Society. That material made ridiculous claims, such as saying that former President Dwight Eisenhower was “consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all his adult life.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 173 - Loc. 2437-43 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:56 PM
For the April 10 shooting at Walker’s, we have only the word of Walker that he was even in the room where the shot was fired. Otherwise, a shot fired into an empty room would be little more than a case of serious vandalism. Walker’s long-standing pattern of public lies and exaggerations in regard to civil rights and minorities calls into question his overly dramatic story of lowering his head just as the bullet was fired into the room. The Warren Commission and others have tried to pin the Walker shooting exclusively on Oswald to show a propensity for murderous violence that is otherwise missing in Oswald’s background. But numerous journalists and authors have pointed out serious problems with that theory. Witnesses saw at least two people at the shooting, and at least two cars were involved in suspicious activity around Walker’s house. None of the witnesses said any of the men looked like Oswald, and Walker’s night watchman said the driver of a suspicious 1957 Chevrolet he spotted casing the house a few days earlier looked “Cuban.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 174 - Loc. 2455-63 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:57 PM
Guy Banister got what he wanted: publicity for a white supremacist ally, a test of whether he could manipulate Oswald into dealing with firearms, and several actions on Oswald’s part that would incriminate him after JFK’s death. Since Oswald had begun the Cuban phase of his covert activity just ten days before the Walker incident—with a letter to the national chairman of the small Fair Play for Cuba Committee—his actions in relation to Walker were probably designed to test his abilities for his new assignment. Unlike Oswald’s previous “defect and return” Russian assignment, anti-Castro operations demanded a new set of skills, from surreptitiously arranging and attending meetings (and keeping them secret from his wife) to dealing with firearms in a covert way. The Walker incident was a chance to see if Oswald, who had never served in combat, could handle that type of- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 175 - Loc. 2473-79 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:58 PM
would incriminate him after JFK’s death. Since Oswald had begun the Cuban phase of his covert activity just ten days before the Walker incident—with a letter to the national chairman of the small Fair Play for Cuba Committee—his actions in relation to Walker were probably designed to test his abilities for his new assignment. Unlike Oswald’s previous “defect and return” Russian assignment, anti-Castro operations demanded a new set of skills, from surreptitiously arranging and attending meetings (and keeping them secret from his wife) to dealing with firearms in a covert way. The Walker incident was a chance to see if Oswald, who had never served in combat, could handle that type of assignment.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 175 - Loc. 2473-79 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:59 PM
John Davis said that Marcello received word that the “Supreme Court . . . declined to review the Marcello deportation action.” The decision was “prominently reported in the New Orleans papers” and “meant that all Carlos’s appeals were exhausted.” With that defeat, “the pressure increased many times over” on Marcello to take action against the Kennedys in order to preserve his freedom and his empire.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 176 - Loc. 2484-87 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 07:59 PM
His boss, Sam Giancana, was put under “lockstep” surveillance by the FBI at the urging of Robert Kennedy, crippling Giancana’s ability to function (and preventing him from having an active role in JFK’s assassination). Rosselli’s power in Las Vegas and Hollywood flowed from Sam Giancana’s high position with the Chicago mob, so unless Rosselli could eliminate RFK’s pressure on Giancana, Rosselli’s own future looked dim.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 177 - Loc. 2494-97 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:00 PM
While law-enforcement officials knew who did the killing, no one was ever tried and convicted for the crime. Such killings showed why Rosselli, Marcello, and Trafficante viewed a much more carefully planned hit on a much higher official as a viable solution to their mutual problems with the Kennedys.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 177 - Loc. 2502-4 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:01 PM
IN THE SPRING of 1963, Carlos Marcello made more documented remarks about assassinating President Kennedy, only this time his comments were not to Ed Becker. They were made to a much closer associate and were not disclosed until the publication of John Davis’s biography of Marcello in 1989. At that time, Marcello had been carefully planning JFK’s murder with his allies for about six months. Davis wrote that one spring weekend in 1963, Marcello was “at his [fishing] lodge” at Grand Isle, Louisiana, with “close friends from the old Sicilian families of New Orleans.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 178 - Loc. 2505-9 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:02 PM
“While having a scotch with one of them in the kitchen,” a friend of Marcello’s friend “made a casual reference to an article he had read . . . about the Supreme Court upholding” Marcello’s deportation order. “At the mention of Robert Kennedy’s name, Carlos suddenly seemed to choke, spitting out his scotch on the floor. Recovering quickly, he formed the southern Italian symbol of . . . ‘the horn,’ with this left hand.” . . . “Holding the ancient symbol of hatred and revenge above his head, he shouted: ‘Don’t worry, man, ’bout dat Bobby. We goin’ to take care a dat sonofabitch.’” The friend asked if Marcello was going to “give it to Bobby,” but Marcello replied, “What good dat do? You hit dat man and his brother calls out the National Guard. No, you gotta hit de top man and what happen with de next top man? He don’t like de brother.” Marcello declared to his friend, “Sure as I stand here somethin’ awful is gonna happen to dat man.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 178 - Loc. 2510-17 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:02 PM
Marcello knew that if he killed the Attorney General, JFK would simply order the National Guard or the Army into Marcello’s strongholds, much as had happened in 1954 in Phenix City, Alabama, after Trafficante’s associates killed the Alabama Attorney General–elect. That would render powerless the political figures in Louisiana and elsewhere that Marcello had corrupted and relied on for protection. For Marcello and his associates, that meant the answer was to kill JFK, not RFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 178 - Loc. 2518-21 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:02 PM
Many days later, Knight was talking to Kiger, and after a couple glasses of wine, Kiger became emotional when speaking about Marcello. Kiger said, “Something bad is going to happen to our President.” The distraught cook said that he had been cooking while Marcello and the Los Angeles mobster were talking. “They don’t think Kiger hears ’em”—but the man gleaned from their conversation that JFK was going to be the target of an attack planned by Marcello. Knight asked Kiger why Marcello would want to do such a thing to President Kennedy. Kiger replied that it was because of Robert Kennedy’s sudden deportation of Marcello and the harrowing ordeal Marcello had to endure. Not long after Marcello managed to sneak back into the United States, Kiger saw the godfather and said his hands and knees were still raw from injuries he had suffered in Central America.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 179 - Loc. 2530-37 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:04 PM
IN 1963 CARLOS Marcello actually had at least one face-to-face meeting with Lee Oswald. Marcello’s meeting with the nephew of his longtime bookie, Dutz Murret, was revealed by the godfather to Jack Van Laningham twenty-two years later, during the CAMTEX undercover FBI operation.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 180 - Loc. 2542-44 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:04 PM
BRILAB had grown out of the FBI investigation of a Teamster insurance scam involving Santo Trafficante. As a result of that investigation, a businessman named Joe Hauser agreed to become an informant for the FBI against Carlos Marcello. He wore a wire into Marcello’s office in the late 1970s, yielding the undercover BRILAB tapes that eventually sent Marcello to prison in the 1980s. According to FBI informant Hauser, Marcello told him that he and some of his men did indeed know Oswald: “I used to know his fuckin’ family. His uncle he work for me. Dat kid work for me, too.” Marcello indicated that Oswald had worked for a time as a runner for his gambling network, the same one that involved Oswald’s uncle.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 181 - Loc. 2555-60 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:06 PM
There are only two time periods when Oswald could have worked for Marcello as a runner: one in late April and early May 1963, while he was living with Dutz Murret, and the other in late July, August, and early to mid-September 1963, when Oswald was not officially employed but when several witnesses saw him working with Guy Banister and David Ferrie.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 181 - Loc. 2561-63 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:06 PM
In addition, Marcello told Van Laningham that he had brought two hit men over from Europe to shoot JFK, as mentioned in Chapter One and detailed in Chapter Twelve . Marcello’s admission about the two hit men was recorded on FBI undercover audiotape.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 182 - Loc. 2574-76 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:07 PM
Murret, Banister, and Ferrie weren’t the only links between Marcello and Oswald. The House Select Committee on Assassinations uncovered other ties between Oswald, his family, and the Marcello organization. As summarized in Vanity Fair, Oswald’s “childhood and youth had been spent in New Orleans [where] Oswald’s mother’s friends included a corrupt lawyer linked to Marcello’s crime operation and a man who served Marcello as bodyguard and chauffeur.” In the summer of 1963, Oswald was bailed out of jail by a man close to “one of Marcello’s oldest friends, Nofio Pecora,” the same man who was “called three weeks before the assassination by Jack Ruby.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 185 - Loc. 2607-12 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:10 PM
- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Bookmark on Page 186 - Loc. 2623 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:11 PM
By the spring of 1963, Jack Ruby owed a small fortune to the IRS—almost $160,000 in today’s dollars—and was desperate for money. The IRS filed tax liens against Ruby on March 13, 1963, and Ruby faced ruin unless he could find another source of money to pay his bills. According to Carlos Marcello, Ruby found the money he needed by taking it from cash that flowed through the Carousel Club. As Marcello explained to Jack Van Laningham years later, his organization actually controlled the Carousel strip club; Ruby merely managed it. Since the club was across the street from Dallas’s most distinguished hotel, the Adolphus, whenever conventions or company meetings were held at the hotel, business at the Carousel was especially brisk, and Ruby probably figured it would be easy to skim some of the proceeds for his own pressing financial needs. Marcello had hidden ownership of several clubs in Dallas, and his financial operatives would have known what all the clubs should be making at particular times of the year. When the Carousel came up short compared to in previous years or other clubs, it wouldn’t have been hard for Marcello’s people to confirm Jack’s ongoing theft. Marcello would have been furious that a longtime mobster like Ruby would take such action, knowing the deadly consequences if caught.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 186 - Loc. 2621-30 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:12 PM
Beginning in late April 1963, Ruby became of great interest to Marcello, and not just for his skimming. The former director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote that “though the [Warren] Commission apparently believed that press speculation about the President’s trip [to Dallas] did not begin until September 13, 1963 . . . a story in the Dallas Times Herald on April 24, 1963 . . . quoted Vice President Johnson as saying that President Kennedy might ‘visit Dallas and other major Texas cities [that] . . . summer.’”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 186 - Loc. 2632-36 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:12 PM
Jack Ruby’s well-documented long-distance phone calls provide a clear record that he was becoming involved in something quite unusual by May 1963. After making fewer than ten long-distance calls in April 1963, Ruby suddenly more than doubled that total to twenty-five in May and more than thirty in June. He continued on that approximate pace through September, but after JFK’s trip to Dallas began firming up for November, Ruby’s total skyrocketed to more than 80 long-distance calls in October 1963 and more than 110 in just the first three weeks of November. Even in those calls, Ruby would have relied on coded words and phrases common in transacting Mafia business, often going through one or more intermediaries to get information to its ultimate destination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 187 - Loc. 2638-43 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:13 PM
Carlos Marcello gave Jack Van Laningham the godfather’s own unvarnished view of Jack Ruby. According to the FBI file, in talking “about Jack Ruby,” Marcello said he “had met him in Dallas, Texas. He set him up in the bar business there. He said that Ruby was a homo son-of-a-bitch but good to have around to report to him what was happening in town. Marcello told us that all the police were on the take, and as long as he kept the money flowing they let him operate anything in Dallas that he wanted to. Ruby would come to Churchill Farms to report to Marcello, so the little man knew what was happening all the time.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 187 - Loc. 2643-48 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:13 PM
Even the landmark biography of Ruby by Seth Kantor, 1978’s Who Was Jack Ruby?, doesn’t mention Marcello, though it was the first book to outline Ruby’s ties to numerous other mobsters. Dallas reporter Earl Golz was one of the first to clearly make the connection between Ruby and Marcello’s organization and Marcello’s control of vice in Dallas, a link soon confirmed by the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations report. However, it was not until the extensive print and television coverage that accompanied the twenty-fifth anniversary of JFK’s murder in November 1988—and publication of Marcello’s biography by John Davis in January 1989—that the general public really began to learn about Ruby’s ties to the mob. It’s important to note that Van Laningham’s report on Marcello’s remarks about Ruby was written up and in FBI files well before that.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 188 - Loc. 2651-57 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:14 PM
With the FBI holding such information close to its vest, journalists and historians had to ferret out the details of Ruby’s involvement with the mob and Marcello’s men bit by bit. Almost four years after Marcello’s 1985 admission to Jack Van Laningham—which was withheld from the public at the time and for the next twenty years—John H. Davis detailed tantalizing connections between Ruby and several Marcello associates.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 189 - Loc. 2671-74 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:16 PM
The most startling admission about Ruby that Carlos Marcello made to Van Laningham concerned a dramatic meeting that Ruby was summoned to, where the godfather confronted Ruby about stealing his money—and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Van Laningham is a large man with a deep voice, and he is normally good natured. However, when he first related to me what Marcello told him about that meeting, he took on the menacing tone that Marcello conveyed to Ruby at that meeting. Marcello confronted Ruby in the old farmhouse in the middle of his sixty-four-hundred-acre Churchill Farms property. Most of it had once been swampland, and some of it still was. Marcello disposed of the bodies of men who crossed him at Churchill Farms, a fact not lost on any member of the godfather’s organization summoned there for a meeting. Recall Marcello’s murder of Thomas Siracusa described in Chapter Four ; his body, according to the FBI, was “thrown into a tub of lye and after decomposition, the partially liquefied remains were poured into the swamp.” Ruby, knowing he was stealing money from Marcello, was probably already nervous when he arrived at the isolated farmhouse. One can only imagine his fear and pleading when Marcello confronted him about his thievery, and the fury Marcello unleashed on him.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 190 - Loc. 2679-89 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:23 PM
As Marcello described the scene to Van Laningham, Ruby was trembling and begging, willing to do anything to keep from paying the ultimate price for stealing from the godfather. If it eventually meant going into a crowded police basement full of well-armed cops, pulling out his gun, and shooting a prisoner, Ruby had no choice but to do it. As indicated by Ruby’s later remarks, it was likely not just Ruby’s life that was on the line but those of his family (two brothers, a sister, nieces, and nephews) as well. An undoubtedly grateful Ruby left the meeting with his life but would become increasingly involved in the dangerous JFK plot. As with any sensitive Mafia operation, Ruby’s participation would be on a need-to-know basis, getting only limited amounts of information about the plot when he needed to know it.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 190 - Loc. 2689-95 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:24 PM
In 1963 as in 1959, Jack Ruby was not a major player but had been given an offer he couldn’t refuse because he knew the right people in the right places. Ruby worked in a city controlled by Carlos Marcello, a city that was expected to be visited by JFK. In Cuba, Ruby had met and tried to help Santo Trafficante, and he was familiar with Tampa, having once lived there and sometimes visiting the city while scouting strip acts. Ruby had worked for Johnny Rosselli’s Chicago Mafia and knew that city well. Jimmy Hoffa’s son admits that his father knew Jack Ruby. The mob bosses and Hoffa had more than a dozen associates in common with Ruby, making it easy to communicate with Ruby through intermediaries, as Ruby’s phone records confirm. Ruby was also a small part of Marcello and Trafficante’s drug network, which would also figure into the JFK plot. Finally, Ruby had the connections with the Dallas Police to arrange for anyone blamed for the assassination in Dallas to be quickly killed. If that didn’t happen, Ruby would have to do the job himself, and the same would likely be true if the assassination occurred in a city besides Dallas.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 192 - Loc. 2708-16 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:25 PM
Ruby had one more set of skills that made him valuable to Marcello and Trafficante in their JFK plot: his experience with Cuba and gunrunning. Cuba would provide the godfathers the key they needed to kill JFK in a way that would prevent high US officials from conducting a truly thorough investigation to avoid exposing secrets that could trigger—in the words of one memo—“World War III.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 193 - Loc. 2725-28 - Added on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 08:28 PM
Part 2
THE SPRING of 1963, Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli had the motive to assassinate President Kennedy—and in many ways the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Castro provided the means.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 195 - Loc. 2738-40 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:51 PM
By using people linked to those operations in their still-developing plan to assassinate JFK, the Mafia chiefs could employ people and equipment for what appeared to be CIA operations—but later some would seem to be linked to JFK’s assassination, forcing CIA officials such as Helms to cover up or destroy much crucial information.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 195 - Loc. 2741-43 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:53 PM
However, the godfathers also needed a way to force CIA Director John McCone, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and new President Lyndon Johnson to withhold crucial information from the press and public, to prevent a potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 196 - Loc. 2748-50 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:53 PM
These two attempts aren’t well known and are missing from the CIA’s later accounts of the CIA–Mafia plots. However, Cuban authorities extensively documented the two attempts, having captured many of the Cuban participants and much of their CIA-supplied armaments and communications equipment.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 196 - Loc. 2752-54 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:54 PM
Both of these attempts involved Mafia don Johnny Rosselli, operating under the supervision of CIA officer William Harvey. Harvey, a hard-drinking, rotund agent sometimes called America’s James Bond,- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 196 - Loc. 2755-57 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:54 PM
In planting those and similar fake stories blaming JFK’s murder on Fidel, Rosselli, Trafficante, and Marcello not only diverted blame for JFK’s murder away from themselves but also ensured that it couldn’t be fully investigated without exposing dark secrets the CIA and other high officials didn’t want revealed.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 197 - Loc. 2767-69 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:56 PM
an embittered John Martino—an associate of Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli—helped concoct a plot designed to secure the backing of the CIA Director and the Kennedys, a plot that was really about providing the Mafia cover for its planned assassination of JFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 197 - Loc. 2776-77 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:56 PM
Mahoney wrote that it “fit nicely with Rosselli’s later claim that President Kennedy was assassinated by an anti-Castro sniper team sent in to murder Castro, captured by the Cubans, tortured, and redeployed in Dallas.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 199 - Loc. 2793-94 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 06:59 PM
Kaiser points out that “ample evidence, however, shows that the raid was actually just another mob plot against Castro’s life, having nothing to do with Soviet technicians,” and that it was “sold to the Agency under a false cover.” As noted by historian Mahoney, the mob bosses’ real goal was to provide cover for JFK’s assassination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 199 - Loc. 2803-5 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:00 PM
It’s important to note that by the spring of 1963, Trafficante, Rosselli, and Marcello would have no longer seen killing Fidel as their highest priority. The pressure on the mob chiefs from JFK and RFK had increased by that time. Carlos Marcello faced federal charges later in the year and knew he would be personally prosecuted by RFK’s men. Trafficante’s operations were under increasing assault, and their ally Jimmy Hoffa faced three trials for various crimes. Rosselli’s boss, Sam Giancana, was severely impacted by the FBI’s “lockstep” surveillance. Killing Fidel Castro while JFK and RFK were still in power would do the mob bosses little good, which meant that murdering JFK was much more important—and time sensitive—for the Mafia chiefs.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 199 - Loc. 2805-11 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:01 PM
Because they also knew nothing about the CIA–Mafia plots in March and April 1963, RFK would have no incentive to protect those operations if they appeared linked to his brother’s murder. Fortuitously for the mobsters, by the time Operation TILT ended in early summer 1963, a new US operation against Cuba had evolved. It was one the Kennedys fully supported and directed and that the three Mafia leaders would soon infiltrate.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 200 - Loc. 2812-15 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:01 PM
From January through April 1963, JFK had prominent New York attorney James Donovan working to secure their release. Donovan had helped Robert Kennedy negotiate the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, and his rapport with the Cuban government soon translated to a working relationship with Fidel, which included accompanying the Cuban leader on skin-diving trips.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 201 - Loc. 2835-38 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:06 PM
The lethal plans approved by Helms were never revealed to Donovan, CIA Director McCone, JFK, or RFK. Donovan was already in some danger, since the CIA’s March 1963 and April 1963 assassination operations (about which Donovan knew nothing) were being planned while he was in Cuba, negotiating with Fidel. Ironically, Castro actually talked with Donovan about the CIA’s attempts to kill him while the men were on a skin-diving excursion.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 202 - Loc. 2846-49 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:06 PM
The CIA fully admits to many well-documented Castro assassination attempts that were not authorized by JFK, RFK, even CIA Director John McCone. More importantly, the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Fidel began before JFK became President and continued long after he was dead.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 203 - Loc. 2852-54 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:07 PM
Word soon spread in the exile community—and even in Cuba—that Williams was essentially the gatekeeper for RFK and JFK. Those wanting the support of either man would have to go through Williams. Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli took notice as well.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 204 - Loc. 2877-79 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:09 PM
RFK and Harry Williams were furious when they saw the article revealing information about their secret plans. The information was probably leaked by Tony Varona, who had volunteered to become the first exile leader to join Williams’s operation, no doubt at the urging of Santo Trafficante. Varona had worked on the CIA–Mafia plots with Trafficante and Rosselli, and he was still working for Trafficante in 1963. That Varona was working on behalf of Trafficante and the Mafia was confirmed soon after Varona began working with Williams when the CIA received a report that Rosselli’s associates had paid a bribe of $200,000 to Varona.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 206 - Loc. 2893-97 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:13 PM
Commander Almeida reached out to Williams within forty-eight hours of seeing the article, getting a message to him to call a certain number in Cuba, a line that was safe from wiretaps.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 206 - Loc. 2901-2 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:13 PM
The logs show that on May 13, 1963, at 5:50 p.m., RFK took a call from President Kennedy. The very next call RFK accepted, at 6:05 p.m., was from Harry Williams. RFK told Williams that JFK had decided to accept Almeida’s offer to stage a coup to overthrow Fidel and that the US government would give Almeida its full backing for the attempt. That was the start of the JFK–Almeida coup plan, one of the most secret covert US operations since D-Day. In fact, that very term was used on May 29, 1963—just over two weeks after Almeida contacted the Kennedys via Williams—when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Maxwell Taylor wrote a memo saying that it was “a matter of priority” to examine the possibility “of an invasion of Cuba at a time controlled by the United States in order to overthrow the Castro government”; the memo included “a proposed date for D-Day.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 207 - Loc. 2911-17 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:54 PM
avoid the main problems that befell the Bay of Pigs operation, which had been a relatively open secret known to dozens of officials, aides, agents, and military officers in the US government, as well as to numerous journalists and even partially to Fidel. This time, any knowledge of the coup plan would be tightly held. Only about a dozen people—including JFK, RFK, CIA Director John McCone, and CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms—would know the full scope of the plan.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 208 - Loc. 2926-29 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:55 PM
The four exile leaders would represent a broad spectrum of politics, from the ultraconservative Manuel Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s best friend, to the extremely liberal Manolo Ray (and his group JURE) and Eloy Menoyo (and his SNFE). Among them, unfortunately, was Tony Varona, who was working for the Mafia. Within several months, CIA memos began to describe those disparate groups as working on a major plot to overthrow Castro.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 210 - Loc. 2963-66 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:58 PM
The JFK–Almeida coup plan didn’t start to become fully exposed until 2006, after the US government sent me a written determination that some files describing Commander Almeida’s secret work for JFK could be released.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 211 - Loc. 2972-73 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 07:58 PM
The goals of the Kennedy brothers were both noble and politically pragmatic: to bring democracy to Cuba while also keeping the volatile issue of Cuba—and whether all the Soviet missiles had really been removed—out of the 1964 elections.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 212 - Loc. 2985-86 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:01 PM
The Cuban populace could hardly be expected to rally around new leaders who boasted of having killed Fidel, whom the CIA admitted was still admired by many on the island. Thus, Williams told me, someone else would “take the fall” for Fidel’s death.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 212 - Loc. 2991-92 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:02 PM
Almeida had enough personal prestige that if he went on Cuban TV and announced that their beloved Fidel had been killed by a Russian or Russian sympathizer, the Cuban people would accept his word, the same way most US citizens at that time would accept a pronouncement by a trusted figure such as J. Edgar Hoover.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 213 - Loc. 2997-99 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:03 PM
When Secretary of State Dean Rusk confirmed the existence of the coup plan to Vanity Fair in 1994, the article’s authors asked Rusk about the Kennedys’ attempts to negotiate with Castro at the same time they were planning a coup against him. In pursuing the two strategies at the same time, “Rusk admits that the Kennedys were ‘playing with fire.’” Rusk told Vanity Fair, “Oh, there’s no particular contradiction there . . . it was just an either/or situation. That went on frequently.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 213 - Loc. 3004-8 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:03 PM
JFK’s earlier-noted comments to John McCone reflect this dual strategy, as does Robert Kennedy’s Oral History at Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. RFK said, “There were some tentative [peace] feelers that were put out by [Castro] which were accepted by us.” But in the very next sentence, RFK adds that at the same time “we were also making more of an effort [against Castro] through espionage . . . in . . . August, September, October [1963]. It was better organized than it had been before and was having quite an effect.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 213 - Loc. 3009-12 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:04 PM
GIVEN THE DECADES of secrecy surrounding the JFK–Almeida coup plan, it’s shocking that a dozen associates of Carlos Marcello, Trafficante, or Rosselli knew about—and in seven cases actually worked on—the top-secret operation. Learning about the coup plan gave Marcello’s group the deadly secret it needed to prevent a full and public investigation of JFK’s murder, if the effort to overthrow Fidel could be linked to JFK’s murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 214 - Loc. 3017-20 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:04 PM
An FBI report written just weeks after JFK’s assassination quotes Jack Ruby as talking about something he must have learned before being jailed for shooting Oswald. According to the memo, Ruby talked about “an invasion of Cuba [that] was being sponsored by the United States Government.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 215 - Loc. 3026-28 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:05 PM
JFK’s “no invasion pledge” regarding Cuba had never taken effect and that “the United States Government” really had been planning “an invasion of Cuba.” Those plans were withheld not only from the Warren Commission but also from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and all other Congressional investigating committees.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 215 - Loc. 3031-33 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:06 PM
FBI files show that Marcello’s pilot, David Ferrie, knew about the “second invasion” planned for Cuba (the Bay of Pigs being the first). According to an FBI memo, a close associate of Ferrie told the FBI about Ferrie’s “dealings with the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy [and] plans for a Cuban second invasion.” Guy Banister, Marcello’s private detective, knew about the coup plan as well.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 215 - Loc. 3037-40 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:06 PM
he taunted the FBI with his knowledge that “President Kennedy was engaged in a plot to overthrow the Castro regime by preparing another invasion attempt against Cuba.” Martino elaborated on the secret Kennedy scheme in an obscure newspaper article contained in an FBI file not released until 1998. In it Martino is quoted as saying—two months after JFK’s death—that when he died “Kennedy was embarked on a plan to get rid of Castro. There was to be another invasion and uprising in Cuba.” Martino accurately noted that “since the death of Kennedy the work on an invasion has virtually stopped.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 216 - Loc. 3048-53 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:10 PM
Even Lee Oswald, who had connections to Marcello documented earlier, made an interesting remark about “an invasion of Cuba” by “the United States” at a time when almost no one was publicly speculating about such an operation. A long-overlooked New York Times article even quotes a Cuban exile—who had contact with Oswald in New Orleans in August 1963 and who knew David Ferrie—as saying that “Lee H. Oswald had boasted [about what he would do] if the United States attempted an invasion of Cuba.” In the summer of 1963, Oswald—accompanied by David Ferrie—reportedly visited a training camp near New Orleans that was affiliated with Manuel Artime, one of the key exile leaders for the JFK–Almeida coup plan.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 217 - Loc. 3056-62 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:11 PM
CIA memos I first published in 2005 confirm that in the early 1960s, Manuel Artime was also working on the CIA–Mafia plots, which also involved Trafficante, Rosselli, and Marcello. Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s best friend, would soon become part of Trafficante’s drug trafficking network. Artime was one of seven associates of the three mob bosses who were actually working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan. The same is true for Tony Varona, the first Cuban exile leader to join Harry Williams’s operation, all while he was still working with Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli on the CIA–Mafia plots. It was their work on those unauthorized plots that allowed some of the mob bosses’ men to infiltrate the Kennedy brothers’ authorized operation, the JFK–Almeida coup plan. E.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 217 - Loc. 3062-68 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:11 PM
Barker was definitely involved in JFK’s murder, according to Harry Williams, RFK’s friend and aide for the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Long before files linking Barker to organized crime were declassified, Williams told me and my research associate that Barker had worked for Trafficante and was doing so in 1963—at the same time Barker was working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 218 - Loc. 3072-74 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:12 PM
As the JFK–Almeida coup plan progressed, Barker assisted Hunt with two of the most sensitive parts of the plan. Barker helped Hunt with the covert payment of $50,000 to Commander Almeida through a foreign bank, the initial installment of an agreed-upon total sum of $500,000 (more than $3 million today). Robert Kennedy had authorized the money in the event the coup was unsuccessful and Almeida had to flee Cuba; if he was killed, the money would alternatively provide for his wife and two children. Barker was well suited for such a financial role, since one of his jobs before the Bay of Pigs invasion “was to deliver CIA cash laundered through foreign banks.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 219 - Loc. 3085-89 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:13 PM
Barker filed reports about a meeting between Manuel Artime and Tony Varona to discuss unity and noting Artime’s meeting with Trafficante “bagman” Frank Fiorini in Dallas to buy an airplane.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 219 - Loc. 3096-98 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:14 PM
In 1963 Harry Williams—and Robert Kennedy—didn’t know that “Barker was connected to [Santo Trafficante],” as he later learned. Williams was not privy to FBI and CIA files (released decades later) tying Barker to the mob; nor did he realize that his associates Tony Varona and Manuel Artime also had ties to Trafficante. The JFK–Almeida coup plan gave Marcello and Trafficante the opportunity they needed to kill JFK in a way that would prevent even Robert Kennedy—as well as Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover—from pursuing a full or public investigation of the murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 220 - Loc. 3101-6 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:14 PM
Johnny Rosselli, always looking for an advantage to exploit, soon turned the hard-drinking David Morales into a close friend; they even took a trip to Las Vegas together. For Rosselli, Morales was just another CIA agent he could use for his own ends—in this case, the JFK assassination. While Barker was helpful, he was only a CIA agent. But Morales was a high-ranking CIA officer who could control operations, who could order weapons shipped, and who was also working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Like Rosselli, David Morales would eventually confess late in life to having a role in the murder of JFK. Morales made his confession to his attorney and also to a lifelong friend after going on a tirade about JFK’s sole responsibility for the failure of the Bay of Pigs. Morales said he had “to watch all the men he had recruited and trained get wiped out because of Kennedy.” Morales then told his friends that “we took care of that son of a bitch” JFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 222 - Loc. 3136-43 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:18 PM
CARLOS MARCELLO’S ACCESS to the highly secret CIA–Mafia plots and those working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan gave the godfather, and his allies Trafficante and Rosselli, the connections he needed to create grave concerns at the highest levels of the US government—if those plans appeared linked to JFK’s murder. From August to November, Marcello and his men would move to compromise more key elements of the coup plan—and other covert CIA operations—as part of their plot to kill JFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 223 - Loc. 3153-56 - Added on Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 11:19 PM
Also, based on his later Congressional testimony, Helms apparently saw no real distinction between his CIA–Mafia plots and the Kennedys’ authorized efforts to stage a coup against Fidel. As Helms would testify to Senate investigators in 1975, “I believe it was the policy at the time to get rid of Castro, and if killing him was one of the things that was to be done in this connection, that was within what was expected.” If true, that belief doesn’t explain why Helms kept President Kennedy, CIA Director McCone, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the dark about his unauthorized operations—or why he used mobsters the Attorney General was trying to prosecute.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 226 - Loc. 3169-74 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:09 AM
Helms might have thought that even if Almeida could initiate the coup, it would still be helpful to have Mafia or exile sharpshooters on hand to finish the job, just in case anything went wrong.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 226 - Loc. 3178-79 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:09 AM
According to Cuban reports, David Morales actually met with Cubela in Paris in September 1963, and the CIA acknowledges that a series of meetings between Cubela and CIA personnel followed. Cubela says the CIA kept pressuring him to assassinate Fidel, while the CIA claims assassination was Cubela’s idea.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 227 - Loc. 3188-90 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:14 AM
Rolando Cubela wasn’t part of the JFK–Almeida coup plan. As JFK’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk told me—and as CIA files clearly show—he had no following inside Cuba that would have allowed him to stage a coup on his own.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 227 - Loc. 3190-92 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:14 AM
Clearly, having Fidel’s neighbor Cubela as part of that plot would be very advantageous: The CIA could use his house as the sniper’s nest and/or even blame him for Fidel’s murder. Cubela was both a disgruntled official and one who—because of his extensive travels—came in contact with Russians overseas more often than most Cuban officials. Blaming Cubela for Fidel’s murder might also let the CIA implicate Russia in Fidel’s assassination.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 228 - Loc. 3207-11 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:16 AM
Someone in the CIA, most likely David Morales, arranged for Cubela to be in a meeting with his case officer in Paris on November 22, 1963, at the exact time JFK was scheduled to be riding in an open car through Dallas. If Morales arranged that as part of his work with Johnny Rosselli, it was the perfect way to force Helms to hide a great deal of information from internal CIA investigators and other high US officials, which is exactly what happened. Americans would not learn about the Cubela operation until twelve years after JFK’s murder, and it was never revealed to the Warren Commission.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 229 - Loc. 3211-15 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:16 AM
Mertz was considered “untouchable” by French authorities, and he often visited America. He made a trip to Louisiana in 1963 using the alias of an anti–de Gaulle activist who’d had contact with the CIA.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 230 - Loc. 3233-34 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:17 AM
Notorious Chicago hit man Charles Nicoletti, another member of Rosselli’s Mafia family, also joined the CIA–Mafia plots in the fall of 1963, according to the Miami Herald and United Press International.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 232 - Loc. 3258-59 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:19 AM
Cuban officials and unconfirmed US accounts say that Nicoletti also became part of the mob’s plan to kill JFK, as did Herminio Diaz, another mob hit man who worked for Santo Trafficante. *- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 232 - Loc. 3262-63 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:19 AM
In 1963 Diaz began working on the CIA–Mafia plots for Trafficante and was also of great interest to David Morales’s supervisor, Miami CIA Station Chief Ted Shackley. The CIA was especially interested in Diaz because in his first interview in the United States with David Morales’s Cuban exile agents, Diaz mentioned Juan Almeida and Rolando Cubela as part of a group of disgruntled Cuban officials who wanted to act against Castro. Diaz had probably acquired the information second- or third-hand from Trafficante (or Bernard Barker), but even though Diaz got some of the details wrong, his mention of Almeida and Cubela was enough to get the CIA’s attention.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 233 - Loc. 3265-70 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:20 AM
It was important for the success of the mob bosses’ plot to kill JFK that the trusted men they brought into the plan—Diaz, Charles Nicoletti, Michel Victor Mertz, and John Martino—all had intelligence ties. That gave them cover for their work on the plot, plus ways to feed disinformation to the agencies they worked for, before and after JFK’s murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 233 - Loc. 3271-74 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:21 AM
As mentioned earlier, a summer 1963 CIA memo says that exile leader Tony Varona was bribed with $200,000 (more than $1 million today) from Rosselli’s boss Giancana. The CIA learned of the bribe from Mafia member Richard Cain, who had been involved in the CIA–Mafia plots since 1960.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 236 - Loc. 3306-8 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:23 AM
But after JFK’s murder, Varona’s Mafia bribe would be yet another explosive piece of information that Helms would have to hide from his own CIA Director.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 236 - Loc. 3314-15 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:23 AM
It was another example of explosive information—information that would cause problems for investigators and intelligence agencies when it surfaced—being planted months before JFK’s murder. Indeed, Odio’s story would cause major last-minute problems for the Warren Commission, until an associate of Trafficante—Loran Hall—indicated that it was he and his friends who made the visit, not Oswald. However, after the Warren Report was published, Hall denied making the visit.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 238 - Loc. 3342-45 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:27 AM
As for Trafficante and Marcello, their motivation to kill JFK only increased during the summer and early fall of 1963. New developments in their cases help explain their extensive and careful plans to assassinate the President. Trafficante was fighting the IRS—the same organization that had sent Al Capone to prison—and three of his brothers were also named in the IRS complaint. Marcello faced an upcoming federal trial in New Orleans. The Justice Department attorney presenting the case against him would be one of RFK’s own Mafia prosecutors, meaning this was one trial that Marcello couldn’t buy his way out of with bribes to local or state authorities. Any conviction could result in another deportation, and Marcello was still scarred with the memory of that traumatic experience.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 239 - Loc. 3348-54 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:28 AM
RFK’s pressure had resulted in the FBI’s wiretapping other mob leaders, who vented their rage at the Kennedys. Bureau agents heard one Philadelphia mobster complain, “With Kennedy, a guy should take a knife . . . and stab and kill that fucker, I mean it.” The mob chief of Buffalo went even further, saying of the Kennedys, “They should kill the whole family.” Marcello differed from them in two ways: He had more to lose, more quickly, from the Kennedys’ assault. And because Marcello headed America’s oldest Mafia family, he didn’t need approval from the other bosses on the national Mafia “commission” before pursuing major hits, like killing JFK.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 239 - Loc. 3355-60 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10:29 AM
Recipients of Teamster pension fund loans included Marcello and Trafficante, and the latter shared an attorney—Frank Ragano—with Hoffa. Kaiser points out that Ragano later said that on July 23, “he met Hoffa in Washington” before leaving to see Marcello and Trafficante. Hoffa gave him a message to take to the godfathers. Hoffa wanted Ragano to tell them, “Something has to be done. The time has come for your friend [Trafficante] and Carlos to get rid of him, kill that son-of-a-bitch John Kennedy. This has got to be done. Be sure to tell them what I said . . . we’re running out of time—something has to be done.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 240 - Loc. 3364-68 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 08:16 PM
According to Ragano, he delivered the message, and “the two men looked at one another in icy silence and did not respond.” Of course, by that time Marcello and Trafficante had already been carefully planning JFK’s murder for at least nine months. Ragano later wrote that he didn’t take Hoffa’s demand seriously. But Ragano’s behavior in the fall of 1963—including publicly toasting JFK’s murder with Trafficante on the night of the assassination and, as reported in an FBI file, handling a huge sum of cash for the assassination—indicates that Ragano played a larger role in JFK’s murder than the attorney ever admitted.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 240 - Loc. 3369-73 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 08:17 PM
The CIA–Mafia plots were a deep secret even within the CIA, with only a handful of trusted officials like Desmond FitzGerald, Helms’s protégé E. Howard Hunt, David Morales, and William Harvey still working on them.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 241 - Loc. 3389-91 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 08:18 PM
Banister and Ferrie were also acting on behalf of their employer, Carlos Marcello, making sure many of Oswald’s activities would later make him look guilty of JFK’s murder. Banister and Ferrie both hated Fidel, and aside from whatever Marcello was paying them, they no doubt hoped that blaming JFK’s death on a seemingly pro-Castro Communist would trigger the US invasion of Cuba that both men knew was being planned.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 245 - Loc. 3431-34 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 08:25 PM
CIA files confirm that at the same time Oswald was generating remarkable publicity, David Atlee Phillips was working on Manuel Artime’s AMWORLD portion of the JFK–Almeida coup plan. The actions of Phillips and Oswald reveal that Oswald’s unusual pro-Castro publicity blitz was part of the CIA’s efforts to place US intelligence assets in Cuba. That would include a face-to-face meeting with Oswald within weeks of Oswald’s publicity blitz, followed by Oswald’s trip to Mexico City as he attempted to leverage that publicity into permission to fly to Cuba.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 246 - Loc. 3447-51 - Added on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 08:26 PM
historian Richard Mahoney documented that six witnesses saw Oswald with Ferrie or Banister in the summer of 1963; two of them said that Oswald was working for Banister at that time. Declassified files and Michael Kurtz later revealed additional witnesses. One uncovered by Kurtz, Consuela Martin, provides a new explanation of why Banister’s office address appeared on the pro-Castro leaflets. Kurtz writes that Martin’s office was next to Banister’s and that “she saw Oswald in Banister’s office at least half a dozen times in the late spring and summer of 1963. . . . On every one of these occasions, Oswald and Banister were together.” Oswald sometimes asked her to do translating work for him by typing documents into Spanish. Martin believes that the 544 Camp Street address was used in hopes of luring unsuspecting pro-Castro leftists to Banister’s office, thus yielding more information for Banister’s voluminous files on leftists, all of whom he viewed as Communists.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 248 - Loc. 3477-84 - Added on Friday, September 12, 2014, 09:45 AM
The pamphlet’s author was ninety years old when researcher James DiEugenio located him, but he had saved a copy of the three-dollar “28 June 1961” purchase order he had received for forty-five copies from the “Central Intelligence Agency, Mailroom Library, Washington 25, D.C.” Those first-printing pamphlets had been ordered when David Atlee Phillips was running operations targeting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, making Phillips a possible source of pro-Castro literature for Oswald’s PR efforts.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 249 - Loc. 3494-98 - Added on Friday, September 12, 2014, 09:46 AM
Oswald’s name “was never included on either part of the [FBI’s] Security Index, not even after he went on to set up his highly visible Fair Play for Cuba chapter.” Oswald’s absence from the list was especially odd since he was a former defector to the Soviet Union, so Russell asks, “[H]ad the FBI received word from someone to keep a relative distance from Oswald . . . because he was considered part of another intelligence operation?” The Warren Commission was never able to satisfactorily answer that question because if Oswald had been on the Security Index, he would certainly have been subject to law-enforcement attention on the day of JFK’s motorcade in Dallas.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 249 - Loc. 3503-8 - Added on Friday, September 12, 2014, 09:48 AM
This CIA document, and other information from French authorities, shows that assassin Michel Victor Mertz, a French Connection heroin trafficker who worked with Trafficante, was deported from Dallas shortly after JFK’s assassination, an important fact kept from the warren Commission. In addition, Marcello told the FBI’s CAMTEX informant that he imported two shooters from Europe for the JFK hit.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 249 - Loc. 3666-69 - Added on Friday, September 12, 2014, 09:59 AM
On August 17, 1963, a WDSU radio host contacted Oswald and invited him to be interviewed on a weekly radio show. The radio personality “admits he had been briefed by the FBI on Oswald’s background.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 252 - Loc. 3744-46 - Added on Friday, September 12, 2014, 10:06 AM
CIA OFFICER DAVID Atlee Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas in late August or early September 1963, apparently to debrief him after his New Orleans media appearances. Oswald had built a public and documented record as firmly pro-Castro and had handled a variety of situations well.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 253 - Loc. 3754-56 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 09:56 AM
While the United States could use speedboats to sneak assets and agents into Cuba at night, those people couldn’t travel freely or openly talk to lower-level officials and the public and thus could not gauge the level of public support for the coup. Since the United States had no embassy or diplomatic relations with Cuba, and since travel to the island was severely restricted, the United States needed a number of assets who could travel openly. As a former defector to Russia, someone like Oswald was especially valuable because if he ever got into trouble, the United States could claim that the Russians were behind his activities.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 253 - Loc. 3757-61 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 09:56 AM
Veciana’s story of meeting Oswald and Phillips in the lobby of the new Southland Building in Dallas has been controversial, though Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi concluded that such a meeting did take place.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 254 - Loc. 3766-67 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 09:57 AM
In 1963 David Morales—who admitted helping to assassinate JFK—still outranked David Atlee Phillips and could easily have proposed to Phillips that he meet Oswald in public and that Veciana be allowed to see Oswald for some reason.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 255 - Loc. 3787-89 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:00 AM
Oswald was not an experienced assassin, and the CIA would have no more trusted him to murder Fidel than the Mafia would have used the inexperienced Oswald to shoot JFK. However, as with JFK’s murder, Oswald did have the proper background to be an excellent patsy to take the blame for Castro’s death.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 256 - Loc. 3797-99 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:02 AM
HISTORIAN JOHN NEWMAN, a twenty-year veteran of military intelligence, posed the question, “Why did Oswald come into contact with so many people with CIA connections in August and September 1963?” He named five individuals, but more have since emerged, including John Martino (whom the CIA admits was a CIA asset), David Ferrie, and David Atlee Phillips. One of those Newman named was William Gaudet, a CIA asset who worked for INCA’s founder. It’s now clear that Gaudet was part of the “tight” surveillance of Oswald mentioned earlier.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 258 - Loc. 3823-27 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:04 AM
House Select Committee on Assassinations found additional evidence of the existence of photos of Oswald in Mexico City. However, only unrelated photos of someone else (who looked nothing like Oswald) would be furnished to the Warren Commission and eventually made public. That’s probably because the CIA’s photo surveillance operation in Mexico City was under the control of David Atlee Phillips, who was no doubt acting on orders from Richard Helms. One reason for withholding the Oswald–Mexico photos—and denying the CIA had known Oswald was in Mexico—would be that Oswald was involved in a highly sensitive, covert operation run by Phillips and Helms.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 259 - Loc. 3847-51 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:08 AM
The Mafia had the connections to ensure that he never got to Cuba. A Mexican police agency involved with Trafficante’s heroin network monitored the Cuban and Russian embassy calls for the CIA while mobster (and active CIA asset) Richard Cain had formerly bugged a Communist embassy in Mexico City.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 260 - Loc. 3855-57 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:08 AM
Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley interviewed a former CIA official who told him that “CIA records suggested that members of [FitzGerald’s staff] seemed to be carefully guarding information about Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was killed.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 260 - Loc. 3860-61 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:09 AM
After analyzing many recently declassified files, Naval War College professor and historian David Kaiser concluded in 2008 that “in all probability, Oswald’s attempt to reach Cuba via Mexico City . . . was designed to give him an opportunity to assassinate Castro.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 261 - Loc. 3870-72 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:13 AM
The training camp outside New Orleans where David Ferrie reportedly took Oswald was a sort of minor-league training camp for Manual Artime’s AMWORLD portion of the JFK–Almeida coup plan. The camp’s owner later said that “he bought arms from Ferrie, who in turn got them from US Army personnel who had stolen them.” Declassified files show that some arms reported stolen from National Guard armories in the Texas area were actually being supplied to Cuban exile leaders like Manolo Ray’s JURE group, which JFK and RFK wanted for their coup plan.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 261 - Loc. 3878-82 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:14 AM
In October 1963 the Treasury Department tried to stop the trafficking in stolen arms with an undercover sting. Surprisingly, FBI and Treasury Department memos from that operation quote a Dallas gun dealer as giving a fairly accurate description of the upcoming JFK–Almeida coup plan. The Dallas gun dealer said that in “the last week of November 1963 . . . a large scale amphibious operation would take place against the Cuba mainland” and “United States military forces or government agencies would possibly be involved in this operation [which] involved an attack by rebel Cuban forces.” Writers for the Washington Post linked longtime gunrunner Jack Ruby to that same stolen-military-arms ring.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 262 - Loc. 3883-88 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:15 AM
Carlos Marcello knew he had to act before the coup took place and removed his only opportunity to force a cover-up by top US officials. Marcello had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by allowing the JFK–Almeida coup plan to go forward.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 263 - Loc. 3898-3900 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:17 AM
The date for the coup was firming up to be sometime in early December 1963, something Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli could have learned from their CIA allies in the JFK plot, like David Morales and Bernard Barker.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 263 - Loc. 3901-3 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:17 AM
With the coup date looming, Marcello and the others organized attempts to kill JFK in November 1963 during motorcades in three different cities: Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas. Marcello relied on his trusted associates—the Chicago mob’s Rosselli and Trafficante in Tampa—to help him oversee the plot.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 263 - Loc. 3905-7 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:17 AM
The Mafiosi had come up with one basic plan that could be applied in each of the three cities. Because the opportunities were so close together, the bosses could use most of the same personnel for each attempt. Each of the three target cities had a key Mafia operative close to law enforcement who would monitor any leaks about—or investigations into—the JFK hit.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 264 - Loc. 3912-14 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:18 AM
In Chicago, the mob’s top “made” man in law enforcement was Richard Cain, who was also chief investigator for the Cook County Sheriff.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 264 - Loc. 3915-16 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:18 AM
In Tampa, Trafficante’s man was Sergeant Jack de la Llana, who had formed and become director of the Tampa Police Department’s first criminal intelligence unit. As revealed in Senate hearings in October 1963, when de la Llana testified while posing as an honest cop, he was also “chairman of the Florida Intelligence Unit, a statewide agency which coordinates information . . . throughout the State of Florida.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 264 - Loc. 3917-19 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:18 AM
In Dallas, Jack Ruby could serve a similar function. Though Ruby wasn’t a member of law enforcement, his friendly contacts with Dallas Police were long-standing and ran deep. According to government files, Ruby knew at least seven hundred of the twelve hundred Dallas policemen; several officers and Ruby associates claimed that Ruby actually knew EVERY Dallas policeman. Ruby was particularly close to several corrupt cops, and as noted earlier, one Warren Commission document called Ruby “the pay-off man for the Dallas Police Department.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 265 - Loc. 3923-26 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 10:19 AM
Brown pointed out the “relative infrequency with which such professional murders are successfully prosecuted” and explained why. He said that police had solved only one of twenty-three Mafia murders in Tampa, and the lone exception was not a typical Mafia hit. Brown said it was very “difficult to obtain evidence sufficient for successful prosecution of Mafia members, because the witnesses who might offer such evidence have always been reluctant to do so [due to] fear of Mafia reprisals, since it is common knowledge in Tampa that the Mafia does not hesitate to murder” those who talk to the authorities or testify.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 267 - Loc. 3957-61 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 07:55 PM
To maintain deniability in case the secret talks were exposed, JFK had to work through William Attwood, who in turn talked to Fidel’s doctor, who dealt with Fidel. The parties were wary of each other, and the negotiations slow.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 269 - Loc. 3973-75 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 07:56 PM
William Attwood said in a memo that they needed to “remove the Cuban issue from the 1964 campaign.” Talks with other Kennedy aides show that John and Robert Kennedy shared that opinion, and it was one factor in scheduling the JFK–Almeida coup plan for December 1, 1963, a date confirmed in a memo by CIA Director John McCone and by RFK’s top exile aide, Harry Williams.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 270 - Loc. 3988-91 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 07:58 PM
To avoid those problems, the Kennedy aide cautiously indicated some of the conditions necessary for JFK to make an informed, reasoned response to the apparent assassination of a US official in Latin America. First, the United States would need to control and limit initial publicity to keep the news media from generating an outcry for an immediate military response against Cuba. To protect Almeida, any possible links between the assassination and the coup plan would have to be hidden from the press. US investigating agencies would need to take control of the investigation from local authorities as soon as possible, including gaining possession of important evidence. The autopsy would have to be conducted at a secure US military facility to ensure that information couldn’t be leaked to the press. All of this would give JFK the time and information needed to make an appropriate response. Some aspects of what many call the cover-up regarding JFK’s assassination—from controlling news accounts to his controversial military autopsy—were thus actually planned weeks and months before JFK’s murder but were intended to manage a completely different situation.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 273 - Loc. 4020-29 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:02 PM
Yet another Trafficante associate, Bernard Barker, had helped CIA officer E. Howard Hunt with the initial payment of $50,000 to Almeida (out of a promised $500,000—almost $3 million in today’s dollars), to help get Almeida’s wife and children out of Cuba on a seemingly innocent pretext.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 276 - Loc. 4063-65 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:05 PM
In 1985 Marcello confided to his cellmate, FBI informant Jack Van Laningham, that “two dagos came from Italy” to act as gunmen in JFK’s assassination. Marcello explained that the gunmen first came to Canada, then into Michigan.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 276 - Loc. 4072-73 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:06 PM
Bringing the gunmen into the United States through Canada and then Michigan is significant for two reasons. First, that was part of a heroin smuggling route through Montreal used by Marcello’s French Connection associates. The Montreal heroin ring also ran an immigration and illegal-identity racket for “supplying false papers”—what would be called identity theft today. In addition to smuggling, the ring was also used for new Mafia recruits, immigrants fresh from Italy and Sicily who needed cover identities.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 277 - Loc. 4088-92 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:07 PM
There were three cities planned for the assassination—Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas—and three fall guys to take the blame: Vallee, Lopez, and Oswald, one for each of the mob bosses (Rosselli, Trafficante, and Marcello).- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 278 - Loc. 4102-3 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:09 PM
Dallas FBI agent James Hosty had visited Marina Oswald on November 1 and again on November 5. After Oswald heard about it, he wrote a note to Hosty warning him away; Oswald personally dropped it off at the Dallas FBI office on November 12. Shortly after Oswald’s death, Hoover ordered the Dallas FBI office to destroy Oswald’s note. The note and its destruction were kept secret from the Warren Commission and the American public. The contents of the note and the circumstances of Oswald’s visit were the subject of three conflicting stories when Congress finally investigated the note in the mid-1970s. The essence of Oswald’s note was that Agent Hosty should “stop bothering my wife [and] talk to me if you need to.” The secretary in the Dallas office testified that she recalled a phrase about “blowing up” the FBI office.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 282 - Loc. 4150-55 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:14 PM
SEVERAL OF OSWALD’S activities during the summer and fall of 1963 bore a remarkable similarity to those of another ex-Marine, Thomas Arthur Vallee—so much so that the Secret Service noted a few of them in a secret memo just three days after JFK’s murder.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 283 - Loc. 4166-68 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:16 PM
According to investigative journalist Edwin Black, Vallee later told him that he had spent part of his time in the Marines in Japan at the Camp Otsu U-2 base, one of several U-2 bases used by the CIA operation. Recall that Oswald had served at a U-2 base at Atsugi, Japan. Like Oswald—whose outrageously pro-Russian remarks were never reprimanded by his Marine superiors—Vallee appears to have gotten special treatment in the Marines.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 284 - Loc. 4179-82 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:17 PM
However, there was yet another young man—this time in Tampa—who had even more parallels to Oswald from August to November 1963: Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. Government files and sources show nineteen parallels in all, which indicate that Lopez was being manipulated as the perfect fall guy if the JFK assassination was in Tampa or if an additional patsy was needed for Dallas.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 289 - Loc. 4250-53 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:25 PM
FBI and government files confirm that Lopez left Tampa shortly after the attempt to assassinate JFK during his motorcade there. He went to Texas, where an unconfirmed newspaper account places him in Dallas on November 22, 1963. CIA and FBI files show that Lopez then crossed the border when it was reopened after JFK’s assassination and went to Mexico City. From there, unlike Oswald, Lopez would be successful in getting into Cuba.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 290 - Loc. 4265-68 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:27 PM
The Warren Commission got only fragments of information about Gilberto Lopez, though it did learn enough to write in one memo that Lopez was on a “mission” of some sort at the time of JFK’s assassination. However, the Warren Commission was never told about the attempt to assassinate JFK in Tampa, so it apparently considered Lopez of only minor interest.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 290 - Loc. 4274-77 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:28 PM
Since it was just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, CIA assets Trafficante, Marcello, and Rosselli knew that if JFK was murdered in public and it quickly emerged that his killer had connections to Cuba and even Russia, high US officials could wind up facing two difficult choices, either of which would be good for the mob bosses. US officials could give in to a public outcry to retaliate against Cuba, which would serve to limit the murder investigation of JFK at a crucial time as the United States went to war. Or US officials could tamp down such speculation and limit a true, full investigation of JFK’s murder to prevent calls for retaliation that could lead to World War III.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 292 - Loc. 4300-4305 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:32 PM
Still more information falsely implicating Fidel in JFK’s murder—almost all of it linked to associates of Trafficante, David Morales, Johnny Rosselli, or Bernard Barker—would emerge in the days, weeks, and months after the assassination. The Mafia chiefs knew those allegations were crucial to maintaining “the World War III pretext for a national security cover-up” that would protect Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli from close scrutiny.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 294 - Loc. 4332-35 - Added on Saturday, September 13, 2014, 11:58 PM
On or about Thursday, October 31, 1963—one day after the Chicago agents’ pretext interview of Vallee—“Vallee’s landlady called the [Secret] Service office and said that Vallee was not going to work on Saturday,” according to the testimony of Agent Edward Tucker to Congressional investigators. The agent testified that because Saturday was “the day of JFK’s visit to Chicago,” this information “resulted in the [Secret] Service having the Chicago Police Department surveil Vallee.” A later FBI report says that as a result of the Secret Service request to the Chicago police, “a 24-hour surveillance was placed on Vallee and his activities by the Chicago Police Department.” On the morning of November 2, before JFK’s motorcade was canceled, Thomas Vallee was heading into the city. According to Congressional investigators, he had put one of his M-1 rifles and his pistol in the trunk of his car, where he also had three thousand rounds of ammunition. Vallee wore a shirt with an open collar and a jacket—similar to what at least one member of the four-man assassin team was wearing.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 307 - Loc. 4489-98 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 12:12 AM
As for the heavily armed Vallee, the HSCA report says that he was “released from [Chicago Police] custody on the evening of November 2.” Vallee was apparently never even brought to the Secret Service office for an interview, then or in the coming weeks. The Secret Service didn’t even talk to ex-Marine Vallee in the days and weeks after the Dallas assassination was blamed on fellow ex-Marine Oswald, even though Secret Service records—some of which are still classified—show that the agency maintained an interest in Vallee for at least the next seven years. Clearly there was more to Vallee and the Chicago attempt than the records released so far reveal.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 308 - Loc. 4507-12 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 12:13 AM
It’s long been documented that Marcello and Ferrie spent the weekend of November 9 and 10 working on strategy at the secluded farmhouse in the middle of the vast Churchill Farms property. Marcello’s federal trial continued in New Orleans, so the two later claimed to government investigators that they were working on trial strategy. However, Marcello had top attorneys to handle that, and Marcello’s main strategy involved bribing a key juror to ensure his acquittal, or at the very least a hung jury, and Ferrie was not involved with that. Their meetings at Churchill Farms were also unusual because Ferrie usually met with Marcello in the godfather’s office at the Town and Country Motel, as he had done several times in October.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 309 - Loc. 4515-20 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 12:14 AM
The stakes were incredibly high for JFK and RFK, since just five days after the Chicago attempt, American newspapers reported that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had publicly warned the “US that attack on Cuba will lead to war.” That made it all the more crucial that no hint of the coup plan could emerge from any investigation of the Chicago threat, or any threats that might emerge during JFK’s upcoming trips to Tampa and Miami on November 18, 1963.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 314 - Loc. 4592-95 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 01:12 PM
In Tampa JFK was scheduled to have a private—though widely publicized—meeting with the head of Strike Force Command (now Central Command) and other military brass, including some brought in from Washington. Coupled with the special lines in JFK’s speech, all this was designed to reassure Almeida that JFK would back him and the coup all the way, even with US military force.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 315 - Loc. 4601-4 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 01:13 PM
According to one account, Lopez had another suspicious associate. The Tampa Tribune later reported that “on Nov. 17, 1963 [when] Lopez attended a meeting in the home of a member of the Tampa chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee [also] thought to have been at that meeting was Lee Harvey Oswald.” The article goes on to say that “recently declassified FBI files quote ‘operatives’ as saying Oswald met with a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Tampa on that date [though] that information was never confirmed.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 317 - Loc. 4628-31 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 01:16 PM
The attempt to kill JFK in Tampa was withheld from the Warren Commission and all later government investigating committees—until I told the JFK Assassination Records Review Board about it, in writing, on November 24, 1994. According to the Review Board’s Final Report, just two months later, “January 1995, the Secret Service destroyed Presidential protection survey reports for some of President Kennedy’s trips in the fall of 1963,” including Tampa. The Secret Service informed the Board a week after it destroyed the records, “when the Board was drafting its request for additional information.” That destruction apparently broke the law, since the 1992 JFK Act that created the Review Board had required agencies to preserve all relevant records. However, when the Secret Service destroyed records for JFK’s Tampa trip in 1995, Commander Almeida was still alive in Cuba—and his secret work for JFK not been publicly exposed—giving the Secret Service a possible national security reason for its actions.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 321 - Loc. 4685-92 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 07:46 PM
The public’s faith in the Secret Service, already at a low ebb after Dallas, would have been shaken to the core if weeks or months after JFK’s death it was revealed that the agency had covered up an assassination attempt in Tampa that had so many parallels with Dallas.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 321 - Loc. 4694-96 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 07:47 PM
ON THE EVENING of November 18, the President flew to Miami and gave his most important speech, with lines directed at Commander Almeida and his allies in Cuba. Those carefully crafted sentences were also designed so they would not upset JFK’s back-channel negotiations with Fidel. In his speech, JFK proclaimed: What now divides Cuba from my country . . . is the fact that a small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation to forces beyond the hemisphere. They have made Cuba a victim of foreign imperialism. . . . This, and this alone, divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible. Once this barrier is removed, we will be ready and anxious to work with the Cuban people.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 323 - Loc. 4714-21 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 07:50 PM
After JFK returned to Washington, he expressed his relief at surviving the trip to his close aide David Powers. According to Kennedy biographer Ralph Martin, JFK told Powers, “Thank God nobody wanted to kill me today!” JFK explained that an assassination “would be tried by someone with a high-power rifle and a telescopic sight during a downtown parade when there would be so much noise and confetti that nobody would even be able to point and say, ‘It came from that window.’”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 324 - Loc. 4728-32 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 07:51 PM
Marcello explained to his cellmate Jack Van Laningham the key role Campisi played in his plot. Campisi hid the two hitmen at his restaurant until it was time for them to go to Dealey Plaza, before JFK’s motorcade was scheduled to pass through that park-like part of downtown Dallas.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 334 - Loc. 4864-65 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 08:36 PM
The owner of the Cellar club, Pat Kirkwood, knew both Jack Ruby and mob associate Lewis McWillie. Kirkwood claimed in a filmed interview for Jack Anderson in 1988 that several strippers who worked for Jack Ruby had come to the club late that night, and he indicated that Jack Ruby might have sent them over on purpose. Kirkwood also claimed that some of the agents “were drinking pure Everclear [alcohol].” Warren Commission documents confirm that some of Ruby’s strippers knew Kirkwood. Whether or not the women were sent by Ruby on purpose, the fact that Secret Service agents were out so late the night before Kennedy’s visit was important information for someone like Ruby. Their presence indicated that the Mafia’s plan for Dallas hadn’t leaked, as it had in Chicago and Tampa. None of the Secret Service limo drivers were involved, though several high-profile agents from the next day’s events were.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 340 - Loc. 4956-62 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 11:32 PM
- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Bookmark on Page 343 - Loc. 4990 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 11:35 PM
Since most of the key events occurred in Texas, Central time is used unless otherwise indicated. JFK’s assassination occurred at 12:30 p.m. CST.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 343 - Loc. 4990-91 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 11:35 PM
Weitzman described the man who claimed to be a Secret Service agent and said the man “produced credentials and told him everything was under control.” Deputy Weitzman said the man was of “medium height, [with] dark hair and wearing a light windbreaker.” Canfield then “showed him a photo of Sturgis [Frank Fiorini] and [Bernard] Barker” because the government had investigated reports—later proved false—that Fiorini and E. Howard Hunt had been photographed in Dealey Plaza after JFK’s murder. * Instead of reacting to Fiorini’s photo, Weitzman “immediately stated, ‘Yes, that’s him,’ pointing to Bernard Barker.” Just to be sure, “Canfield asked, ‘Was this the man who produced the Secret Service credentials?’ Weitzman responded, ‘Yes, that’s the same man.’” Weitzman even said he’d be willing “to make a tape recorded statement for official investigators,” and he recorded a statement for Canfield, in which he reaffirmed the Barker identification.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 358 - Loc. 5204-12 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 11:59 PM
In the late 1990s, when researchers showed Malcolm Summers a photo of Bernard Barker, he had identified Barker as the armed man he had encountered on the knoll moments after JFK was assassinated. Could CIA agent and later Watergate burglar Bernard Barker have been one of the fake Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza? Michael Canfield was party to a lawsuit involving E. Howard Hunt in which he and his coauthor obtained a sworn deposition from Barker. When their attorney asked Barker where he was on November 22, 1963, Barker initially remarked, “This is a question that came up during the Watergate Hearing,” but review of Barker’s Watergate testimony reveals no such questioning. In Barker’s deposition, he said that “I was working for the Agency, they know exactly everywhere I was, I reported to them daily.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 358 - Loc. 5213-19 - Added on Sunday, September 14, 2014, 11:59 PM
Aside from Clemons, the Warren Commission did not hear from two other important witnesses. According to researcher Larry Harris, “Frank Wright, who lived on the next block . . . heard gunshots, went out to see what was happening and saw a man standing near a police car. He insisted the man ran and jumped in a gray car parked beyond” Tippit’s car “and sped away west on Tenth Street. Jack Tatum told House Assassination Committee investigators that he . . . had just passed a police car when the shooting broke out; Tatum paused and watched the gunman walk behind the squad car and take careful, deliberate aim before firing one more shot into Tippit.” The House Select Committee on Assassinations said, “This action, which is commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an execution,” something one might expect of an experienced hit man.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 372 - Loc. 5410-16 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 12:22 AM
After John McCone arrived at RFK’s estate, probably between 2:45 and 3:00 (EST), Mahoney writes that Robert “went out on the lawn with him. ‘I asked McCone,’ Kennedy was to tell his trusted aide Walter Sheridan, ‘if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me and [McCone said] they hadn’t. ’” Mahoney points out that “McCone was one of Bobby’s closest friends in the Administration, and this extraordinary question revealed a deep and terrible suspicion about the CIA, something born of some knowledge, or at least intuition, and not simply the incontinence of grief.” Of course, neither McCone or RFK knew about the ongoing CIA–Mafia plots, or the assassination side of the Cubela (AMLASH) and QJWIN operations. RFK’s question likely referred to some aspect of the JFK–Almeida coup plan that both men knew about, particularly the AMWORLD portion with exile leader Manuel Artime. Not long after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. notes, CIA Director McCone told RFK that “he thought there were two people involved in the shooting.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 382 - Loc. 5548-55 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 12:35 AM
By 5:00 (EST), McCone was back at CIA Headquarters, meeting with officials who knew about the JFK–Almeida coup plan, including Richard Helms and Lyman Kirkpatrick. Helms told neither man that he had continued the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel, or that a CIA officer had been meeting with Roland Cubela about Fidel’s assassination at the very moment that JFK was shot.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 382 - Loc. 5556-58 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 12:36 AM
AROUND 5:15 P.M. (EST), J. Edgar Hoover issued an internal memo stating that police “very probably” had Kennedy’s killer in custody, calling Oswald a nut and a pro-Castro extremist, an “extreme radical of the left.” Hoover soon began to exert pressure on senior FBI officials to complete their investigation and issue a factual report supporting the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. Though it wasn’t a federal offense for one person acting alone to kill a president, it WAS a federal offense for two or more people to conspire to “injure any officer of the US engaged in discharging the duties of his office.” Thus, proclaiming Oswald the “lone assassin” kept it a local and not a federal prosecution—and kept it out of the hands of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 387 - Loc. 5630-36 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 12:47 AM
As Powers told my research associate—and as Powers and O’Donnell both confirmed to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill—they clearly saw shots from the front, from the grassy knoll. Powers and O’Donnell had known and worked with RFK for years; the Attorney General would have trusted their observations. In addition, White House physician Admiral George Burkley—the only doctor at Bethesda who had also seen JFK at Parkland—later stated that he believed JFK had been killed by more than one gunman.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 399 - Loc. 5800-5804 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:54 AM
Only a few basic facts are not in dispute. All agree that the Bethesda doctors didn’t realize JFK had been shot in the throat, since a tracheotomy incision obscured that wound. The Bethesda doctors did find JFK’s small back wound, so they initially assumed he had been shot once in the back and once in the head, and that Connally had been hit by a separate shot. Not until the next day, Saturday, did lead autopsy physician Dr. James Humes learn about the throat wound, and he burned his first draft of the autopsy report on Sunday, November 24.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 400 - Loc. 5809-13 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:55 AM
Robert Kennedy’s concerns about the exposure of the Almeida coup plan would have been shared by other officials in the know, like Joint Chiefs Chairman General Maxwell Taylor, who had ultimate authority over a military facility like Bethesda.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 401 - Loc. 5819-21 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:56 AM
One of the main points of RFK’s subcommittee’s making the Cuba Contingency Plans—the one about the possible “assassination of American officials”—had been to avoid a situation in which the premature release of information could back the President into a corner and cause a crisis that could go nuclear. The thinking behind that planning appears to have been implemented to deal with JFK’s death.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 401 - Loc. 5821-23 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:56 AM
A laboratory technician at the autopsy, Paul O’Connor, said that “Admiral Burkley controlled what happened in that room that night, through Robert Kennedy and the rest of the Kennedy family.” O’Connor said that when Burkley came into the autopsy room, he “was very agitated—giving orders to everybody, including higher-ranking officers.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 401 - Loc. 5830-32 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:57 AM
Burkley was basically supervising everything that went on in the autopsy room, and that the commanding officer was also responding to Burkley’s wishes.” Dr. Burkley himself stated in his oral history at the JFK Library that “during the autopsy I supervised everything that was done . . . and kept in constant contact with Mrs. Kennedy and the members of her party, who were on the seventeenth floor.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 402 - Loc. 5836-39 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 09:58 AM
While the official autopsy was jammed with officers and other personnel, an earlier unofficial national security autopsy would have been conducted with only a few people present. This scenario could also explain other documented discrepancies.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 404 - Loc. 5866-68 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 10:01 AM
A brief national security autopsy before the official one, as well as national security concerns following the official autopsy, could also account for the many problems surrounding the autopsy photographs and X-rays. Douglas Horne was the Chief Analyst of military records for the congressionally created JFK Assassination Records Review Board for three years in the 1990s. In addition to the problem with JFK’s throat wound, Horne recently wrote, “There is something seriously wrong with the autopsy photographs of the body of President Kennedy. . . . The images showing the damage to the President’s head do not show the pattern of damage observed by either the medical professionals at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, or by numerous witnesses at the military autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. These disparities are real and are significant.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 405 - Loc. 5878-84 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 10:04 AM
ON THE EVENING of November 22, my confidential Naval Intelligence source was called back to his office. Now that Lee Oswald’s name had surfaced in JFK’s murder, he and his co-workers were given new orders: to destroy and sanitize much of the “tight” surveillance file their group had maintained on Oswald since his return from Russia.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 407 - Loc. 5909-12 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 10:06 AM
AT 9:00 A.M. (EST) on November 23, 1963, CIA Director John McCone talked to Robert Kennedy. McCone was set to meet with new President Lyndon Johnson at 12:30 to start briefing him on the most pressing intelligence matters, so it’s not hard to imagine that McCone and RFK must have discussed what McCone was going to tell LBJ about the coup plan with Almeida. At that point, LBJ had had no involvement in the plan and probably didn’t even know it existed.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 408 - Loc. 5928-31 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 10:08 AM
However, neither man realized that stories like the one they saw were not only later discredited, but also linked to the Mafia. One CIA cable that weekend tried to urge caution in dealing with such reports, but it went unheeded, at least initially. The bottom line was that high US officials like LBJ and McCone—and lower officials who gained power in later decades like Haig and Califano—were left with the false impression that Castro had killed JFK. That mistaken impression has helped to essentially freeze US–Cuba relations since the time of JFK’s murder. However, at the time, it also served to divert attention and suspicion away from the Mafia.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 411 - Loc. 5976-81 - Added on Monday, September 15, 2014, 10:13 AM
either or both men would have made excellent patsies for JFK’s death if anything had happened to Oswald or if someone else was needed to shoulder some of the blame. At the same time, each may also have been serving (or thought he was serving) some legitimate role for US intelligence.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 413 - Loc. 6001-3 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:53 AM
John Whitten was Helms’s Covert Operations Chief for all of Mexico and Central America. In a detailed report that he wrote soon after JFK’s death, one kept classified for thirty years, Whitten said that after “word of the shooting of President Kennedy reached the [CIA] offices . . . when the name of Lee Oswald was heard, the effect was electric.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 413 - Loc. 6005-7 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:53 AM
Historian Michael Kurtz has written that Hunter Leake, the Deputy Chief of the New Orleans CIA office at the time, told him “that on the day after the assassination, he was ordered to collect all of the CIA’s files on Oswald from the New Orleans office and transport them to the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.” Kurtz wrote that “[along with] other employees of the New Orleans office, Leake gathered all of the Oswald files. They proved so voluminous that Leake had to rent a trailer to transport them to Langley.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 414 - Loc. 6010-14 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:55 AM
Leake later learned that many of these files were . . . ‘deep sixed.’ Leake explained that . . . the CIA dreaded the release of any information that would connect Oswald with it. Leake thought that his friend Richard Helms, the Agency’s Deputy Director for Plans, was probably the person who ordered the destruction of the files because Helms had a paranoid obsession with protecting the ‘Company.’”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 414 - Loc. 6015-18 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:55 AM
IN A PHONE call recorded at 10:01 a.m. on November 23, J. Edgar Hoover admitted to Lyndon Johnson that “the case, as it stands now, isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction.” Yet the Saturday-morning newspapers were conveying just the opposite impression by establishing the basic “lone assassin” scenario that some people still believe today. In hindsight, it seems absurd to think that all the relevant information about the shooting, and an unusual former defector like Oswald, could be uncovered less than twelve hours after the shooting—and that clearly wasn’t the case.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 415 - Loc. 6029-34 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:57 AM
In those pre-Watergate times, they could simply be told that certain information was too sensitive, could compromise US operations, or might force a confrontation with the Soviets—and just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, this last explanation might be all that was required, since Oswald’s Soviet and Cuba connections had been so widely reported.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 416 - Loc. 6037-39 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:57 AM
As mentioned in Chapter One , when information linking Oswald to David Ferrie first started to surface during the weekend after JFK’s murder, an NBC cameraman related that “an FBI agent said that I should never discuss what we discovered for the good of the country.” That same phrase, “for the good of the country,” would be used to stop Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell from revealing they had seen shots from the grassy knoll, and it was probably used to silence others as well.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 416 - Loc. 6040-43 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 09:58 AM
Texan Dan Rather’s career-making scoop was his role as the first journalist to view and report on the Zapruder film, though so firmly entrenched by the weekend was the “official” story of the lone-assassin-shooting-from-behind that Rather claimed the home movie showed JFK’s “head went forward with considerable violence” after he was shot. The public wouldn’t get to see the film for themselves—and learn that JFK was pitched backward, not forward—for another twelve years.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 417 - Loc. 6053-57 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10:00 AM
While covering the assassination helped their careers, it sometimes impeded any questioning of the “official” version of the lone assassin, both at the time and for years to come.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 417 - Loc. 6059-61 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10:00 AM
The fact that the CIA discovered later that someone had been using the name of Souetre would also allow an official like Helms (or Angleton or Harvey) to ask INS officials to remove the information about the deportation from their files, on national security grounds.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 419 - Loc. 6093-95 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10:03 AM
EVEN AS EVIDENCE tying Oswald to Cuba and Russia caused concern among officials in Washington, and would soon break in the press, Marcello continued the pressure to have Oswald killed. With the authorities still seeking David Ferrie, the whole plot could unravel and point to people working for Marcello. The godfather could make only limited efforts to contain Oswald’s public statements and cooperation with police, which is why two attorneys linked to Marcello had been asked to represent the still lawyerless Oswald. (They were Clem Sehrt, an associate of Carlos Marcello who had known Oswald’s mother since the 1950s, and Dean Andrews, who knew David Ferrie.) But only killing Oswald could guarantee his silence.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 420 - Loc. 6099-6104 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10:04 AM
The plan was for Ruby to wire Carlin the money the next day, from a Western Union office only one block from the police station where Oswald would be moved. The following day, Ruby’s time-stamped Western Union receipt would be designed to “prove” that Ruby just happened to be near the police station when Oswald was being moved. It’s clear this was only a cover story, since there were two Western Union offices much closer to Ruby’s Oak Cliff apartment.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 422 - Loc. 6126-29 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10:07 AM
Upstairs, in Detective Fritz’s office, a small group of officials were questioning Oswald, but at 11:15 a.m. they were told their time was up. However, the transfer car wasn’t in position, so the group with Oswald had to slow its passage toward the basement. The basement was packed with at least seventy policemen and forty newsmen. At Western Union, Ruby wired Carlin the money at 11:17 a.m. and then headed back to the police station, only a block away. The timing was tight for Ruby to have any hope of claiming a “sudden passion” defense, but he had plenty of associates who could signal when he should arrive. For example, only one minute after Ruby left the Western Union office, his attorney entered the police station and saw Oswald coming out of the jail elevator. Ruby’s attorney turned to leave, telling a police detective, “That’s all I wanted to see.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 424 - Loc. 6163-70 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:23 PM
As Oswald was rushed to Parkland Hospital, the apprehended Ruby appeared to police officer Don Ray Archer as “being extremely agitated and nervous, continually inquiring whether Oswald was dead or alive.” Oswald died at 1:07 p.m. It was only after Ruby was told that his victim was dead that “Ruby calmed down,” according to Marcello’s biographer, John H. Davis.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 425 - Loc. 6177-80 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:24 PM
Marcello knew that Ruby was a long-time mob associate who could be trusted not to talk. But the godfather realized there were still avenues investigators could pursue that could lead to his associates. So, even as the government continued to scramble to deal with the aftermath of two assassinations—including the national security implications of JFK’s murder and the coup plan that was on hold—Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli implemented plans to keep attention focused away from themselves, and toward Fidel Castro.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 427 - Loc. 6207-11 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:28 PM
Marcello and Trafficante used the legitimate national security concerns surrounding the coup plan with Almeida to keep the pressure on US officials to withhold key information from investigators, the press, and the public, to protect the US government’s ally high in the Cuban government. That pressure included continuing to have their men float “Castro killed JFK” stories that would find their way to occasionally receptive officials in Washington.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 429 - Loc. 6221-25 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:29 PM
Commander Almeida would remain high in the Cuban government and unexposed for decades, so protecting his life and his family would be a legitimate national security concern for a series of Presidents and CIA Directors, from 1963 until Almeida’s death in 2009.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 430 - Loc. 6225-27 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:30 PM
National security concerns were also used to hide not just the “tight” surveillance of Oswald but the structure that allowed a massive program of domestic surveillance by a raft of agencies—including the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence—to be conducted on thousands of Americans in the 1960s, including some in the JFK investigation.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 430 - Loc. 6230-32 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:30 PM
One of the consequences of Oswald’s death was the creation of the Warren Commission. Sometimes misperceived as something solely created by LBJ so he could control the investigation, the Warren Commission was actually created due to the efforts of several Robert Kennedy associates. Neither President Johnson nor J. Edgar Hoover wanted the Warren Commission, whereas RFK’s associates apparently saw a commission as preferable to having the whole investigation in the hands of LBJ and Hoover.- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 431 - Loc. 6239-42 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:33 PM
Hoover’s memo of his conversation with Katzenbach on the afternoon of November 24 says, “The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”- The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (Lamar Waldron) - Highlight on Page 431 - Loc. 6248-49 - Added on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 08:34 PM
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