Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (35 page)

Although officially no deals were made with Lansky and Lucianothey supposedly cooperated out of sheer patriotism-soon Luciano was
transferred from the "Siberia" of Dannemora to the more genial surroundings of Great Meadow Prison near Comstock, New York. Although in subsequent investigations into the Mafia-Navy partnership, the government
denied any deals were made, the alliance proved effective.

Union strikes and sabotage were practically nonexistent on the New
York docks during the war. And when U.S. forces landed in Sicily, there
were Mafia men waiting to show them the location of German positions
and safe routes through minefields.

During this final phase of the war, the Mafia-military cooperationknown as Operation Underworld-moved from the Navy to the Office of
Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA.

On January 3, 1946, Dewey-by then governor of New York-forwarded to the state legislature an executive clemency for Luciano that
noted Luciano's "aid" to the war effort. Luciano was freed from prison
but promptly deported. He had never bothered to become a naturalized
citizen. He sailed for Italy aboard the S.S. Laura Keene on February 3,
1946. Once ensconced in Italy, Luciano didn't accept retirement. He
began to bring his formidable organizational abilities to worldwide crime.
Later that year, he turned up in Havana, Cuba, where Lansky was busy
consolidating the gambling and prostitution business. However, American
authorities warned the Cubans that medical supplies would be shut off if
Luciano was allowed to remain. He soon departed.

Returning to Italy, Luciano began to organize an international narcotics
syndicate that remains with us today.

The contemporary awareness of organized crime dates back to a conference of law-enforcement officials called together by U.S. attorney general
J. Howard McGrath in 1950. Officials from New Orleans, Dallas, and
other cities testified to the brutal takeover of crime in their areas of
jurisdiction. One dissenter was Otto Kerner, the U.S. attorney from Chicago, who maintained there was "no organized gambling in the city of
Chicago .. ." In 1973, Kerner was convicted of accepting $150,000 in
bribes from horse-racing interests.

One of the results of the 1950 conference was the creation of a Select
Senate Committee to probe organized crime under the sponsorship of
Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The Kefauver Committee hearings
lasted well into 1951 and provided much more public knowledge about the
national crime syndicate. While Attorney General McGrath-along with
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover-had maintained that no crime syndicate
existed, Kefauver and his committee provided the evidence that it did. The
committee found that organized, professional gambling and bookmaking
was widespread throughout the nation, that the narcotics industry was a
"highly organized crime" and that the mob had infiltrated legitimate
businesses ranging from advertising to transportation.

It also showed the amount of official corruption that was necessary for
the syndicate to flourish. The committee's final report quoted a mobster named John Roselli, who later became embroiled in the CIA-Mafia assassination schemes:

[T]he wire service, the handbooks, the slot machines, and the other
rackets which have thrived in the city of Chicago cannot operate without
local corruption; if the handbooks are open, the conclusion is inescapable that the police are being paid off.

The Kefauver Committee also found that organized crime had spread
from the cities of New York and Chicago to new markets in places like
Kansas City, New Orleans, and Dallas.

After visiting New Orleans, the committee described it as "one of
America's largest concentrations of gambling houses." One of these houses,
the Beverly Club, was found to be owned by Phil Kastel, Frank Costello,
Jake Lansky (Meyer's brother), and a local Mafia leader, Carlos Marcello.

Carlos Marcello (real name: Calogero Minacore) was born in 1910, the
child of Sicilian parents living in Tunisia. That same year, the family came
to New Orleans. At that time, the leader of the Mafia in New Orleans was
Charles Montranga, who had escaped a mass lynching in 1891 following
the murder of Police Chief David Hennessey.

In 1922, Montranga was succeeded by one of his lieutenants, Sam
Carolla. Carolla became a bootlegger during Prohibition and consolidated
the mob's control of New Orleans. In 1932, Carolla was convicted of
shooting a federal agent and was sent to prison, where he continued to run
his crime organization. That same year, New York Mayor-elect Fiorello
LaGuardia was clamping down on mob operations there, so Frank Costello
moved his slot machine business to New Orleans with the permission of
Carolla. Carolla even supplied a young associate to run the newly arrived
gambling operation-Carlos Marcello.

By 1947, Carolla and Marcello-with the aid of Costello and Meyer
Lansky-had expanded their gambling operations to include a racetrack,
wire service, and several plush casinos. That year, Carolla was deported to
Sicily and, despite two illegal trips back, his control over New Orleans
passed to Marcello.

By 1963, Marcello's empire was estimated by the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission to range into the hundreds of millions of
dollars, although Marcello claimed he made only about $1,600 a month as
a tomato salesman. Much of Marcello's ownings had been put under the
names of close relatives, thus hiding his true worth.

Marcello's national crime contacts included Costello, Joe Civello of
Dallas, Sam Yaras of Chicago, Mickey Cohen of Los Angeles, and Santos Trafficante, Sr., identified by the Kefauver Committee as Tampa's leading mobster.

Since the Kefauver Committee hearings, the U.S. government has tried
unsuccessfully to deport Marcello, who holds only a Guatemalan passport
obtained allegedly by bribes.

In the spring of 1961, Marcello found he was facing a new, and much
tougher government opponent than in the past. Entering the offices of the
Immigration and Naturalization Services in New Orleans for his regular
quarterly appointment to report as an alien, Marcello found himself handcuffed and driven to Moisant International Airport on direct orders from
the new U.S. attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy.

He was flown twelve hundred miles to Guatemala City, where he was
dumped without luggage and with little cash. Forced to leave Guatemala
because of the ensuing political uproar, Marcello somehow found his way
back to Miami. House Select Committee on Assassinations chief counsel
Robert Blakey claims wiretaps showed Marcello was flown back to the
United States by a Dominican Republic Air Force plane, however, others
claim he was flown back by pilot David Ferrie.

Although still fighting deportation, Marcello managed to remain in the
United States. But his Sicilian pride must have been greatly injured at
Kennedy's unceremonious actions. It was not long afterward that Marcello
reportedly made threats against the attorney general.

Edward Becker, a Las Vegas promoter and corporate "investigator,"
told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he was present at a
meeting in September 1962, at Marcello's estate just outside New Orleans,
Churchill Farms. Becker said at the mention of Kennedy's name, Marcello
became angry and stated: "Don't worry about that little Bobby son-of-abitch. He's going to be taken care of." According to Becker, Marcello
then uttered a Sicilian curse:

"Livarsi na petra di la scarpa." (Take the stone out of my shoes.)

Marcello described President Kennedy as a dog and Bobby Kennedy as
the tail. He then gave a startlingly accurate prophesy of what was to come.
He said the dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail, but cut off
the head and the dog will die, tail and all. The analogy was clear-with
John Kennedy out of the way, Bobby Kennedy and his war on crime
would come to an end.

Becker said Marcello even had a plan. Marcello said he would use a
"nut" for the job, someone who could be manipulated so that the killing
could not be traced back to him.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations determined that there
were many connections between Marcello and the JFK assassinationMarcello's associate in Dallas; Joe Civello, was close with Jack Ruby; a
Marcello employee, David Ferric, was first Lee Harvey Oswald's Civil Air
Patrol leader and said to have been in contact with Oswald during the
summer of 1963; and Oswald's uncle, Charles "Dutz" Murret, was acquainted with Marcello's personal driver as well as other associates of
Marcello.

It was just a few months after Marcello's reported threat that Lee Harvey
Oswald arrived in New Orleans.

In 1957, a conflict over who would lead the American crime syndicate
was resolved on October 25, when two gunmen shot Albert Anastasia out
of a barber's chair in New York. Earlier that year, Frank Costello,
Luciano's successor, was shot while entering his Manhattan apartment. He
lived, but was charged with tax evasion after a note was found on him
listing receipts from the recently built Tropicana Hotel in developing Las
Vegas. Costello retired from the rackets.

Three weeks after Anastasia's death, a mob conference was called by
Vito Genovese. It was held at the country estate of a Mafia lieutenant near
the small town of Apalachin in upstate New York. On hand was a
collection of almost every leader of the crime syndicate. The purpose of
the meeting, according to later testimony of some of those present, was the
demand that Genovese be named "boss of all bosses" after he justified the
attacks on Costello and Anastasia. One argument presented was that
Anastasia had tried to move in on the Cuban gambling operations of
Santos Trafficante, Jr., of Florida.

But before business could be settled, the police arrived, tipped off by an
alert New York State Police sergeant who had become suspicious of all the
big black cars with out-of-state license plates. Police roadblocks and
searches of surrounding woods netted fifty-nine of the crime leaders, most
of whom claimed they had come to visit a sick friend. They included Joe
Bonanno, Joseph Magliocco, Carlo Gambino, Carmine Lombardozzi, John
Bonventre, and Joseph Profaci from New York; Anthony Magaddino from
Niagara Falls; Vito Genovese, Gerardo Catena, Joseph Ida, and Frank
Majuri from New Jersey; Frank DeSimone from California; Joe Civello
from Dallas, Texas; and Trafficante. Carlos Marcello had wisely sent a
surrogate while others, such as Sam Giancana of Chicago, escaped.

It was the first public look at organized crime since the Kefauver
Committee hearings in the early 1950s. But some people were already
aware of the serious threat posed by the mob's syndicate. One of these was
young Robert Kennedy who, after making a nationwide fact-finding tour in
1956 and 1957, became most concerned with the mob's takeover of labor
unions.

On January 30, 1957, the U.S. Senate unanimously created the Senate
Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management
Field-which became known as the McClellan Committee after its chairman, Senator John L. McClellan of Arkansas. The committee's chief
counsel was Robert F. Kennedy. One of the senators on the McClellan
Committee was a young man from Boston, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy later said his brother wanted him on the committee to keep it from being
overloaded with conservative, antilabor people.

Both Kennedys were highly active in the committee's work, which first
took on the corrupt leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Dave Beck. Following the committee's investigation, Beck was convicted
in a state court of larceny and then convicted of tax evasion in federal
court. Beck went to prison in 1957. (He was granted a full pardon by
President Gerald Ford in May 1975.)

With Beck gone the presidency of the Teamsters Union went to Jimmy
Hoffa. Even before Hoffa could be brought before the McClellan Committee, he was indicted for attempting to bribe commission attorney John Cye
Cheasty.