Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (33 page)

The Odio story caused great problems with the Warren Commission
Report. If Oswald was in Dallas, he couldn't have been traveling by bus to
Mexico at the same time. And, if the Oswald in Odio's apartment was not
the real Oswald, then it is clear that someone was impersonating him with
an eye toward implicating Oswald in the assassination. Small wonder the
Commission decided to let the matter rest.

There is even some evidence to suggest that Oswald was in contact with
anti-Castro Cubans on the Sunday prior to the assassination. In 1979,
the Dallas Morning News reported that a photographer in Abilene, Texas,
recalled a Cuban friend receiving a note from "Lee Oswald" on Sunday,
November 17, 1963. Harold Reynolds said he had been friends with a
Pedro Valeriano Gonzales for some time and knew him to be involved in
anti-Castro activities. Gonzales was president of the Cuban Liberation
Committee, an exile organization in Abilene, where he worked as a schoolsystem maintenance man. Reynolds said he was showing Gonzales some
baby pictures that Sunday when the landlady knocked on the door and said
she had noticed a note stuck in Gonzales's door for two or three days.
Reynolds took the note. He recalled:

In handwriting, it said something like "Call me immediately. Urgent"
and had two Dallas phone numbers written on it. I noticed the name
"Lee Oswald" and asked Gonzales who he was. Seems like he said,
"Some attorney from Dallas." He looked nervous and sweat started
appearing on his forehead. So, I left to go up the street and deliver some
photos. As I was coming back, I noticed his car a few blocks from his
house and him standing in a pay phone booth.

Reynolds said he thought this unusual as Gonzales had a telephone in
his home.

The Warren Commission could not account for Oswald's presence on the
Sunday prior to the assassination.

At an organizational meeting of the Abilene Cuban Liberation Committee, Gonzales had read a letter from his friend in Miami, Manuel A. de
Varona, who expressed his desire to visit his friends in Abilene.

Varona, the former Cuban prime minister under Carlos Prio Socarras,
was involved in the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Varona also was
coordinator of the Cuban Revolutionary Council.

In fact, the Dallas Morning News reported having obtained copies of
letters from the owner of the building at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans
to Varona asking for help in paying for the CRC's office space there.
(Recall that some of Oswald's FPCC material was stamped "544 Camp
Street. ")

Reynold's wife said Gonzales came to her home just after the assassination and demanded all photos and negatives that Reynolds may have taken
of him and his friends. Gonzales simply dropped from sight in Abilene a
short time later.

Reynolds said Gonzales never admitted knowing Oswald, but that on at
least one occasion, he asked his friend about Kennedy. Gonzales told him:
"Somebody is going to kill him."

While many people, particularly those close to U.S. intelligence and
military sources, claim that Kennedy may have been killed on orders from
Castro as a reprisal for the CIA-Mafia-Cuban plots against him, the
evidence seems to point more toward the anti-Castro Cubans.

One anti-Castro leader, John Martino, even spelled out the assassination
plan to a Texas business friend in 1975. In a startling telephone conversation with Fred Claasen, repeated by author Summers, Martino admitted to
serving as a CIA contract agent. He told Claasen:

The anti-Castro people put Oswald together. Oswald didn't know who
he was working for-he was just ignorant of who was really putting him
together. Oswald was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater. They
were to meet Oswald in the theater, and get him out of the country, then
eliminate him. Oswald made a mistake. . . . There was no way we could
get to him. They had Ruby kill him.

Others such as former senator Robert Morgan, a member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee that looked into CIA-Mafia plots, continued to maintain that Kennedy brought about his own death. Morgan, differing from the
conclusions of his own committee, stated flatly: "There is no doubt in my
mind that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated by Fidel Castro, or
someone under his influence, in retaliation for our efforts to assassinate him. "

But most researchers today doubt seriously that Castro had a hand in
Kennedy's death. Even the accused assassin couldn't buy it. During interrogation on the Sunday morning he was killed by Jack Ruby, Oswald was
asked if his beliefs regarding Cuba played a role in the assassination. He
replied: "Will Cuba be better off with the President dead? Someone will
take his place, Lyndon Johnson, no doubt, and he will probably follow the
same policy..-"

Also, while Castro eventually did learn of the plots against him, there is
no firm evidence that he knew of these schemes in time to have launched a
retaliatory strike by November 1963.

And again, there seems no serious motive for Castro to have Kennedy
killed outside of simple revenge-and every motive against the idea.

In a 1977 interview with Bill Moyers broadcast on CBS, Castro denied
any thought of trying to kill the U.S. president:

It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba . . . It would have been
a provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk
that our country would have been destroyed by the United States.
Nobody who's not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in
retaliation].

But if the evidence of Castro's involvement in the assassination is
meager, it is more than made up for by the abundance of evidence of
anti-Castro Cuban involvement, as we have seen in this chapter.

And behind the anti-Castro Cubans always lurked the shadowy hands of
U.S. intelligence and the even darker spector of organized crime.

After leading a successful revolution in Cuba, Fidel Castro angered
many interests in the United States by ridding his island nation of organized crime and American business domination.

Castro chose to turn to the Russians for help after the United States
initiated sanctions against Cuba. This Moscow-Havana connection further
incensed factions within the U.S.

Responding to urgings from these factions, Vice President Richard
Nixon encouraged action against Cuba-resulting in the ill-fated Bay of
Pigs Invasion.

This invasion was to be launched by a brigade of anti-Castro Cubans
under the direction of the CIA and with the assistance of the U.S. military.
But right from the start, President Kennedy let it be known that he would
not use American military force against Castro.

Despite this knowledge, the CIA officials behind the invasion went
ahead with their plans.

The invasion was launched on April 17, 1961-less than three months
after Kennedy took office-and proved an utter disaster.

The invasion's failure was blamed on Kennedy's refusal to unleash
military naval and air support. Everyone connected with the invasion-the
anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA, the military, and organized crime-was
bitter toward the new president. This acrimony only increased with Kennedy's attempts to bring tighter control over the CIA and with his decision
not to order a second invasion of Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis.

More hatred toward Kennedy was generated as the secret war against
Cuba was geared down after the missile crisis and with Kennedy's attempts at reconciliation with Castro.

Into this world of passionate anti-Castro Cubans, adventurous CIA
agents, and Mafia soldiers was injected the odd ex-Marine Lee Harvey
Oswald.

Oswald, while maintaining a posture as a pro-Castro Marxist, nevertheless
was in continuous contact with several anti-Castro elements.

During the summer of 1963, Oswald was loose in a deceptive world of
undercover agents while living in New Orleans.

And while it may never be positively determined exactly who Oswald
was working for, it is safe to assume that his employers represented the
anti-Castro Cubans and their CIA and mob allies.

Oswald's activities during this period of time-and particularly the
Silvia Odio affair-point to a manipulation of Oswald and others in laying
a trail of incriminating evidence connecting the ex-Marine and vocal
Castro supporter to Kennedy's assassination.

Kennedy's not going to make it to the election. He's going to be hit.

-Miami Mafia boss Santos Trafficante

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants arrived in the United
States from all corners of the world seeking the golden American dream.
What most found was an impoverished and bleak existence in one of the
many big-city ghettos, where they were trapped by their inability to speak
English, lack of education, and class and cultural differences.

Just like the inner cities of today, these ghettos spawned a multitude of
street gangs with names like the Whyos, the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery
Boys, the Tenth Avenue Gang, the Village Gang, the Gas House Gang,
the Midnight Terrors, and the Growler Gang. Despite their colorful names,
these gangs were anything but funny. Young toughs would rob and beat
their victims in broad daylight, with little to fear from the police-as long
as they confined their illegal activities to the ghetto and its cowed population.

In the various ethnic communities there were those who had belonged to
the secret societies of other countries-the Mafia of Sicily, the Camorra of
Italy, and the Tongs of China. They brought the learned terror and
intimidation of these societies to their new home, where it found fertile
soil.

The Mafia used a technique involving the Black Hand. The victim,
usually a successful businessman, would receive a letter demanding money.
It would be signed with the imprint of a black hand. Rumors were spread
that the Black Hand was a secret society of assassins that operated with
impunity. Even the famous Italian singer, Enrico Caruso, was shaken
down in this early-day protection racket.

If the demands for money were not met, the recipient's business might
burn down or a relative might be kidnapped or beaten. The Mafia offered
protection from the Black Hand-its own invention.

As America entered the twentieth century, the city gangs were becoming
more adept at their profession and expanding operations to include gambling, prostitution, and lotteries. They also were the bankers for the poor,
charging exorbitant interest rates from those who could borrow money
nowhere else.

The Irish brought a new dimension of power to the gangs. Unhampered
by a language barrier and experienced in politics in their homeland, the
Irish gangs gained advantages by allying themselves with political figures.
Initially it was the politicians who used the gangsters. Ballot boxes were stuffed, voters intimidated, and opposition rallies broken up. But as the
gang leaders grew more wealthy, and thus more powerful, soon the politicians came seeking favors. Through the years that Tammany Hall controlled New York City, Irish gangsters provided the enforcement muscle.

Another source of power for Tammany was the twelve-hundred-member
Eastman gang, run by a Jewish immigrant named Monk Eastman (real
name: Edward Osterman). After a furious public gun battle in August 1903
between the Eastmans and a rival gang, the authorities stepped in-not to
eliminate the gangs, but to arrange a truce.

As the fortunes of America soared between 1910 and 1929, so did those
of the gangs, particularly those with far-sighted leadership. Another Jewish
gangster from New York, Arnold Rothstein, became an example of the
successful underworld leader. Nicknamed "The Brain," Rothstein grew
from a small-time gambler into one of the most powerful men in the city.
He even reportedly fixed the 1919 World Series. Rothstein moved in the
most respectable circles, rubbing elbows with city and state officials.

For more than fifty years prior to 1920, American groups such as the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and others had lobbied Congress and state legislatures to prohibit the manufacture
and sale of distilled spirits. Finally, with many male voters off serving in
the military and with the emotional exhaustion and moral primness following World War I, their dream became reality. In December 1917, Congress passed the eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the
sale of intoxicating beverages, and by January 1919, the necessary thirtysix of the forty-eight states had ratified it.

In October 1919-overriding the veto of President Woodrow WilsonCongress passed the Volstead Act, which created the government bureacracy
needed to enforce the eighteenth Amendment. On midnight January 16,
1920, Prohibition became the law of the land.

Less than an hour after midnight, six masked men drove a truck into a
Chicago railroad switchyard, broke into two freight cars, and made off
with $100,000 worth of whiskey marked FOR MEDICINAL USE ONLY. That
was just the beginning of an era that witnessed rapid decay of public
morality, disrespect for law, and the rise of a gigantic criminal empire that
remains with us today.