Legacy of Secrecy (3 page)

being behind JFK’s murder—something the mob bosses’ confessions

now confirm.8

All the secrecy that began in 1963 had tragic and lingering effects on

America and the world, because intelligence and investigative agencies

kept making the same mistakes. Several of those involved in the intel-

ligence operations surrounding JFK’s murder wound up being involved

in US missions in Laos, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, and Central America—all

with disastrous results. Because the reasons for the failure of JFK’s coup

plan were never exposed, later US coup attempts against dictators like

Saddam Hussein failed for many of same reasons JFK’s coup plan failed.

The US intelligence failures noted in the 9/11 Report, which preceded

that tragedy, are echoed in some cases almost word-for-word in docu-

ments depicting the intelligence failures prior to JFK’s assassination.

The current impasse between the US and Cuba—essentially

unchanged since the early days of JFK’s administration—illustrates how

the secrecy surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination and the JFK-

Almeida coup plan still affects America today. The economic stakes are

higher now than ever before, especially with Cuba’s vast oil reserves,

but US economic sanctions make normal trade impossible. The con-

tinuation of those sanctions for decades is due, in part, to the mistaken

belief of some former officials—like former Secretary of State Alexan-

der Haig—that Fidel Castro killed JFK, a belief whispered among some

US officials and Cuban exile leaders for decades. Those rumors persist

because more than a million CIA records related to JFK’s assassination

and the JFK-Almeida coup plan are still withheld today, despite the

1992 JFK Act, passed unanimously by Congress requiring their release.

Legacy of Secrecy
’s Epilogue lists just a few of the most important docu-

ment groups from 1963 that are still being withheld, and many more are

detailed in almost every chapter.9

Legacy of Secrecy
was written to reveal our hidden history, so that

America does not have to keep repeating its tragic past. We believe it’s

better to know the truth, however painful, than to rely on the sometimes

distorted or incomplete view of the history that has resulted from the

withholding or destruction of so much vital information.

Author’s note: Several key names have been simplified and standardized in

this book. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be referred to without “Jr.,” while

his father is identified with “Sr.” Tampa godfather Santo Trafficante Jr. will be

treated the same way, while his father will be referred to as Santos Trafficante

Sr. The names of several important Cuban exiles will be standardized to their

most common usage in government files and by associates: Manuel Artime,

Manolo Ray, Eloy Menoyo, Tony Varona, and Harry Williams.

Also, to minimize disruption while reading, we sometimes put an endnote

number at the end of a paragraph instead of putting it at the end of the particular

sentence it refers to.

PART ONE

Chapter One

The rifle fire in Dallas that killed John F. Kennedy changed America

forever, casting a long shadow on the history of the years that followed.

JFK’s murder didn’t just start a frantic effort to find his assassins—it

also triggered a series of covert actions to hide the fact that the United

States was on the brink of invading Cuba. The exposure of this top-

secret plan, part of a JFK-authorized coup to topple Fidel Castro, could

have led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets only a year after

the Cuban Missile Crisis. Revealing the coup, which was only ten days

away, would have also cost the life of JFK’s ally high in the Cuban gov-

ernment, Commander of the Army Juan Almeida, ending any chance

the US had of toppling Fidel from the inside. The cover-ups by key

US officials, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon

Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, and the CIA’s Richard Helms, kept the JFK-

Almeida coup plan secret from the public, not just at the time, but for

decades to come. However, it also had the tragic effect of preventing a

full investigation of JFK’s assassination, spawning a legacy of secrecy

that would lead to more deaths and impact presidents, Congress, and

US foreign policy for the next forty-five years.

Important files that have been declassified in recent years, coupled

with new disclosures from two dozen Kennedy associates, allow the

story to be detailed for the first time. They allow us to chronicle the

secret investigations into JFK’s death undertaken by Robert Kennedy

and others, which had to be conducted covertly to avoid exposing the

JFK-Almeida coup plan and other intelligence operations. CIA officials,

such as Richard Helms, had to protect not only legitimate covert opera-

tions, but also unauthorized schemes withheld from the Kennedys and

Helms’s own CIA Director, like the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro.

New revelations about John and Robert Kennedy, the CIA, the Mafia,

and Cuba cast the aftermath of JFK’s death in a whole new light. This

new information shows who was actively involved in JFK’s murder,

who was covering up to protect their reputation, who was protecting

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

national security, and who was really trying to solve the assassination.

The information that Robert Kennedy and other officials decided to

reveal, or not to reveal, would generate much of the controversy sur-

rounding the JFK assassination that persists even today. The decisions

they made on November 22, 1963, are why “well over a million CIA

records” remain classified today, sixteen years after Congress unani-

mously passed a law requiring their release.1

To understand their actions, it’s important to look first at what the

key players had been doing in the weeks and months leading up to

JFK’s assassination. Much of the following is from the thousands of

pages of formerly secret government files that were not available to the

Warren Commission or the Congressional investigations of the 1970s,

’80s, and ’90s.

In 1963, the second most powerful man in America was the President’s

brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Bobby, as he liked to be

called by friends and associates, was far more than the nation’s top law

enforcement official. As the President’s closest confidant and protector,

Bobby advised JFK on most important official, political, and personal

issues. Not yet the almost saintly idealist some would say he became

before his own assassination, the Bobby of 1963 could be brash and

cocky, a tough adversary. Acutely aware of the way government, the

media, and big business really worked, he constantly tried—often with

success—to get what he and JFK wanted. Yet he also inspired fierce loy-

alty from those who worked for him, who saw in him a determination

to make America and the world a better place.

Bobby’s path to becoming Attorney General was part of JFK’s path

to the presidency. In 1958, Senator John F. Kennedy started laying the

groundwork for his presidential run by becoming the most publicized

member of a Senate committee investigating the Teamsters and orga-

nized crime. Bobby, the committee’s chief counsel, did much of the

actual grilling of Mafia bosses and their associates, such as Jimmy Hoffa.

Rumors about Mafia ties and Prohibition-era bootlegging had long

dogged their father, Joseph Kennedy, one of America’s wealthiest men,

and going after mob bosses so aggressively was one way for JFK and

Bobby to neutralize that issue. The crime hearings had become a mat-

ter of national urgency because the Mafia’s power had grown tremen-

dously during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower and

Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s early ties to the Mafia have been

extensively documented, most recently by author Anthony Summers.

His best-selling book about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover,
Official and

Confidential,
makes a persuasive case that Hoover’s soft treatment of the

Mafia (Hoover denied the very existence of the Mafia for years) resulted

from the Director’s efforts to hide his own closeted life.

While Senator John F. Kennedy and Bobby couldn’t prosecute Mafia

bosses in 1958 and 1959, they could at least expose their criminal orga-

nizations to public scrutiny. This was true even when a mob boss repeat-

edly refused to answer questions by using his Fifth Amendment right

against self-incrimination, as did Louisiana/Texas godfather Carlos

Marcello. In a public session on March 24, 1959, Bobby posed dozens

of incisive questions to Marcello, and when the crime boss declined

to answer, Bobby’s interrogation clearly outlined Marcello’s criminal

empire. This included Marcello’s extensive involvement in the heroin

trade, something he shared with his close associate Santo Trafficante,

the godfather of Tampa, who controlled much of Florida.

The Kennedys had less success in getting Trafficante to appear, since

he spent so much time visiting his Havana casinos. When Bobby Ken-

nedy had the director of the Miami Crime Commission testify about

Trafficante, Bobby noted in the hearing that there had been a mob hit

in Tampa the previous day. Trafficante finally fled to Cuba in 1959, to

avoid testifying about his role in the notorious barbershop murder of

New York mob boss Albert Anastasia.

Much to Bobby’s frustration, still another Mafia boss was able to

evade testifying in 1959 because of his secret work for the CIA against

new Cuban leader Fidel Castro.2 Unknown to Bobby Kennedy, this plot

to assassinate Castro had been brokered for the CIA by Jimmy Hoffa,

who used his arms sales to Castro and Mafia ties to his own advantage,

as later documented by Congressional investigators. This 1959 plot

wasn’t successful, and the following year the CIA took a fresh approach

by avoiding Hoffa and working directly with a new set of mob bosses,

including Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli (and eventually, Marcello).

However, involved in both Hoffa’s Cuban arms sales and the original

1959 Castro assassination plot was a small-time Dallas gangster and

gunrunner named Jack Ruby.3

During the 1959 Senate crime hearings, Bobby was never able to find

a man using the alias of “Jack La Rue,” who was on the fringe of the

first CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots while smuggling armaments

to Cuba. Much evidence and testimony shows that Dallas nightclub

owner Jack Ruby was involved in the same operations as “Jack La Rue.”

Unbeknownst to Bobby in 1959 while he was fruitlessly looking for

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

the mysterious “Jack La Rue,” Jack Ruby was running guns to Cuba

with La Rue’s associates while also being used by Marcello as a mes-

senger to Trafficante. Despite their setbacks in tracking down “La Rue”

and Trafficante, JFK and Bobby were more successful in getting testi-

mony from Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and Teamster chief Jimmy

Hoffa: Newsreel footage shows Bobby verbally sparring with each, with

mutual contempt.

JFK officially launched his presidential campaign in that same Sen-

ate hearing room, before eventually winning the extremely close 1960

election. While the media often focuses on possible mob support in West

Virginia arranged by Joseph Kennedy, and the Chicago Mafia’s role

in swinging that city to JFK (as if powerful Mayor Daley’s help didn’t

matter), more Mafia support went to JFK’s opponent, Vice President

Richard Nixon. According to a trusted Justice Department informant,

in September 1960, “Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash

which was going to Nixon” with the aid of Jimmy Hoffa. Marcello’s half

million was to be matched by other Mafia bosses, including “the mob

boys in . . . Florida,” like Trafficante, who were no doubt fearful of what

a Kennedy presidency might mean for them.4

Once JFK took office in 1961, he appointed his brother Bobby as Attor-

ney General of the United States, and, with a prosecutor’s zeal, Bobby

immediately made Carlos Marcello, Jimmy Hoffa, and Tampa’s Santo

Trafficante prime targets for investigation. Bobby eventually pressured

J. Edgar Hoover, now officially Bobby’s subordinate, into making some

efforts against the Mafia, but in the meantime Bobby developed his

own staff of special prosecutors in the Justice Department. In addition

to his staff of Mafia prosecutors, Bobby organized a separate Justice

Department group, informally called the “Get Hoffa Squad,” to target

the Teamster leader. Bobby Kennedy used compartmentalization for

security and administrative reasons, keeping the Get Hoffa Squad and

his Mafia prosecutors almost completely separate. This tactic would

have grave repercussions around the time of JFK’s assassination, when

both groups were kept separate not only from each other, but also from