Legacy of Secrecy (72 page)

arms he had stolen from the AMWORLD supplies.20

Still in favor with the CIA was bomb expert Luis Posada, even though

CIA files indicated his “involvement in [a] 1965 attempt to overthrow

[the] Guatemalan government.” That summer, the CIA had asked

Posada to pass “silencers, C-4 explosive, [and] detonators to” a Miami

organized-crime figure and to Norman Rothman, an associate of Santo

Trafficante and Jack Ruby. Shortly after that, Posada was building

“bombs for RECE and working directly with Mas Canosa,” who would

later reign as the top exile leader in the US for almost two decades. After

Posada passed a lie-detector test, the CIA pronounced its bomb maker

to be “of good character, very reliable, [and] security conscious.” The

CIA made him a Technical Supervisor, paying him $400 a month, and

by September 1966, the Agency sent Posada to the Bahamas to look for

a “suitable site for caching weapons.”21

By the summer of 1966, the CIA was at least tolerating one Cuban exile

whom the Kennedys had banned from US operations: Rolando Mas-

ferrer. The former Cuban death-squad leader wanted to invade Haiti,

which could then be used as a base from which to attack Castro. Masfer-

rer claimed the CIA had approved his effort—a statement that would be

hard to believe if not for the fact that CBS was putting up $200,000 (more

than $1 million in today’s dollars) to buy the rights to film Masferrer’s

invasion of Haiti. As noted earlier, Carl Bernstein highlighted CBS’s

cooperation with the CIA at the highest levels in that era, so it’s difficult

to believe the network would have supported Masferrer if the CIA had

not approved.

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Even if the CIA didn’t give its explicit approval to CBS, the Agency

certainly could have stopped the venture by telling CBS that it was

strongly opposed. It’s possible that under the CIA’s new, more covert

backing of anti-Castro operations, Helms or FitzGerald wanted to see

CBS take the risk. If Masferrer’s plan worked, the CIA could use Haiti

as a new base for anti-Castro operations. If Masferrer’s plan failed, then

CBS, not the CIA, would have a black eye.22

Masferrer’s operation was a bizarre foreshadowing of the reality-TV

trend of forty years later. Ostensibly, he planned to use Cuban exiles

and Haitians to overthrow the cruel Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier

(known as “Papa Doc”). Because Masferrer would then use Haiti as a

staging ground for an invasion of Cuba, Cuban exiles had an incentive

to risk their lives for the Haiti invasion.23

The venture with Masferrer turned into a fiasco for CBS: A young

exile was hurt while CBS filmed his training, and he sued the network

for a million dollars (though he ultimately settled for a fraction of that).

In November 1966, a fake news report of an invasion surfaced, causing

a Haitian hotel to threaten to sue for lost business. Rumors also sprang

up that “Papa Doc” was going to pay Masferrer $200,000—and give

him a base—in exchange for
not
staging the invasion. CBS executives

finally pulled their support, though Masferrer continued his plan to

invade Haiti. However, the sorry episode ended for years any serious

investigation by the TV networks—not just of Masferrer, but also of any

Cuban exile activity—which hindered the exposure of the exiles who

had helped Trafficante and Marcello kill JFK.24

Chapter Twenty-seven

The summer of 1966 saw the first wave of American books critical of the

Warren Report, and the reactions of Bobby Kennedy, Richard Helms,

and J. Edgar Hoover would have far-reaching implications. Prior to that

summer, only a smattering of books about the assassination—most of

which initially appeared overseas—had criticized the Warren Report.

The first significant critical book to originate in America was a paper-

back original,
The Unanswered Questions About President Kennedy’s Assas-

sination
. Written by veteran reporter Sylvan Fox, who would soon join

the
New York Times
, the book generated little media attention. However,

it was a solid work and advanced European author Joachim Joesten’s

pattern of using the Warren Commission’s own Report and twenty-six

volumes of evidence to pick apart their “lone nut, magic bullet” conclu-

sion. By the summer and fall of 1966, Fox’s book was followed by a host

of well-documented, pro-conspiracy books, which also made use of the

government’s own evidence and testimony to make their case. These

included attorney Mark Lane’s
Rush to Judgment
, Sylvia Meagher’s

Accessories After the Fact
, Josiah Thompson’s
Six Seconds in Dallas
, and

Edward Jay Epstein’s
Inquest
.

Bobby Kennedy’s friend, former JFK aide Richard Goodwin, was very

impressed with
Inquest
, which focused on problems with the medical

evidence and the “magic bullet.” Goodwin not only wrote a glowing

review of
Inquest
for the
Washington Post
that appeared on July 23, 1966,

but Goodwin also declared that an “independent group should look at

[Epstein’s] charges and determine whether the Commission investiga-

tion was so flawed that another inquiry is necessary.”

Goodwin’s comments were the subject of an article in the next day’s

New York Times
, which pointed out that he was “the first member of the

President’s inner circle to suggest publicly that an official re-examination

be made of the Warren Report.” The following day, Goodwin was at

Bobby’s New York apartment, trying to talk to him about
Inquest
and

the need for a new investigation. However, Bobby could reply only, “I’m

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

sorry, Dick, I just can’t focus on it.” Goodwin persisted, telling Bobby,

“We should find our own investigator—someone with absolute loyalty

and discretion.”1

Bobby suggested, “You might try Carmine Bellino. He’s the best in

the country.” Bobby had worked with the investigative accountant at the

Justice Department, after originally using him as a Senate investigator to

unravel Hoffa’s and Marcello’s complex criminal financial dealings. Bel-

lino would have been ideal, given not only his experience with Bobby,

but also his former work with Guy Banister and Robert Maheu. Years

later, Bellino would help to lead the Senate Watergate investigators as

they exposed the criminal activity of several AMWORLD veterans.2

The conversation between Bobby and Goodwin soon turned to other

matters, but later that night, Bobby returned to the subject of the assas-

sination. He said, “About that other thing. I never thought it was the

Cubans. If anyone was involved it was organized crime. But there’s

nothing I can do about it. Not now.” Four years after Richard Good-

win first wrote that account in 1988, he told Bobby’s biographer, Jack

Newfield, that Bobby had specifically pointed to “that mob guy in New

Orleans.”3 It was as if Bobby couldn’t bear to say the name of the man

who had murdered his brother.

Perhaps it’s just as well that Goodwin didn’t pursue an investigation

at that time using Bellino. As Goodwin told us in an interview when he

confirmed the above account, he didn’t know about the JFK-Almeida

coup plan. Bobby couldn’t tell him all about it because Goodwin still

worked for his hated rival, Lyndon Johnson. In addition, Bobby didn’t

tell Goodwin that he had already attempted private investigations of

JFK’s murder, to no avail. However, Goodwin’s pleas may have pro-

vided a spark that would ignite a new round of private investigations

for Bobby in the coming months.4

In the meantime, the renewed public interest in JFK’s murder spawned

by the new books weighed increasingly on Bobby. On October 30, 1966,

Bobby told Arthur Schlesinger that he “wondered how long he could

continue to avoid comment on the [Warren] Report.” Schlesinger wrote

that while Bobby “believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse

it . . . he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic

business.”5

However, the rising tide of publicity due to the books didn’t look like

it would crest soon, and one book—Lane’s
Rush to Judgement
—was soon

high on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Bobby had to make sure the

medical evidence was secure, so the day after his remarks to Schlesinger,

Bobby ordered the lawyer for the Kennedy estate to transfer much of

the autopsy evidence to the official custody of the National Archives.

However, Bobby didn’t include the steel container that apparently held

JFK’s brain and tissue samples taken from around the wounds. Also

missing from the transfer were some of the autopsy photos, including

those of JFK’s open chest and others official photographers had taken at

the Bethesda autopsy; even today, these photos are not at the National

Archives.6

FBI and Congressional files show that J. Edgar Hoover was very wor-

ried about the new books attacking the Warren Report’s conclusions.

Hoover and the FBI had plenty of intelligence failures to cover up, from

Joseph Milteer to the Mafia threats against JFK to Jack Ruby’s Mafia

ties. The counteroffensive Hoover developed would include prominent

journalists, a Supreme Court justice, and even electronic surveillance of

members of Congress and critical journalists.

Hoover’s use of the US media was probably even more sophisticated

than that of Helms and the CIA. After all, Hoover had been ruling the

FBI and using the media long before the CIA was created, having made

himself a celebrity and turned “G-men” into movie heroes back in the

1930s. By 1967, a constant stream of books, articles, and even a weekly

TV show praised the FBI and its Director. Helms’s envy of the
televi-

sion program
The FBI
would eventually prod Helms to pressure Holly-

wood executive Jack Valenti to turn E. Howard Hunt’s spy novels into

a TV show, just weeks before Watergate. Only after J. Edgar Hoover’s

death would investigators find that the books Hoover had supposedly

authored were actually written by FBI personnel at government expense,

although Hoover had kept the proceeds.7

On November 13, 1966, Hoover had an internal FBI memo issued

regarding how to deal with critics of the Warren Report. Intended only

for use within the FBI, it makes a surprising admission, confirming that

the FBI’s “basic investigation was substantially completed by November

26, 1963,” the day after Oswald’s murder—inadvertently acknowledg-

ing the rush to judgment that critics claimed. The memo suggests that

FBI media assets should stress the FBI conducted “approximately 25,000

interviews” This leaves out the fact (included in a CIA memo) that a

number of those were actually “reinterviews” of the same witnesses,

sometimes conducted because the interviewee was at odds with the

FBI’s hastily reached conclusion.8

More than a month before the FBI’s November 13, 1966, anti-critics

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

memo was issued, Hoover received what he considered a green light

from LBJ in the matter, conveyed through Supreme Court Justice Abe

Fortas. Declassified files show that Hoover had already long been wag-

ing a campaign against critics of the FBI and the Warren Report, so LBJ’s

message simply gave Hoover the presidential stamp of approval to do

what he had already been doing.

On October 7, 1966, Clyde Tolson had written a memo to Hoover

about his meeting that day with “Justice Abe Fortas in his chambers at

the Supreme Court.” Fortas had requested the meeting so that he could

give Tolson some information for Hoover. Earlier that day, Fortas had

met with LBJ, who was “extremely concerned regarding the rash of

books” about JFK’s assassination. LBJ was also concerned about Wil-

liam Manchester’s forthcoming book authorized by the Kennedy fam-

ily,
Death of a President
, fearing that it would make him look bad. LBJ’s

concerns were not surprising, given the impending 1968 election and

the possibility that Bobby Kennedy might challenge LBJ from within his

own party. Justice Fortas told Tolson that “Chief Justice Warren shared

the concern of the President” about the books. Like LBJ, “Warren felt that

[Hoover] should attempt to set the record straight by making informa-

tion available to the public,” since Warren believed that as Chief Justice,

he shouldn’t speak out publicly on the assassination. Warren was even

willing “to make certain that various documents were declassified,” and

offered to personally deal with officials or agencies that might object to

their release.9

Fortas said he was relaying LBJ’s request for assistance to Tolson “on

an extremely confidential basis” so that Tolson could take it to Hoover.

Fortas was anxious to help and suggested that Hoover rebut the critics

via “a book, a series of articles, or through the medium of one lengthy