Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (33 page)

Possible Scenarios

An electrifying realization occurs when we challenge our assumptions about the JFK assassination. We always assume that the operation was successful because it ended in the death of President Kennedy. But what if it was
un
successful? What if that wasn’t the complete end goal? What if it was also trying to accomplish something else? Then, suddenly, all the crazy pieces of the puzzle magically fit right together. What had seemed to be going in two different directions at the same time has then only been going in one all along. Allow us to explain.

It has become apparent that there were actually two aims of the assassination. One was to kill JFK and the other was—by making it look like Cuba was to blame for it—necessitating an invasion of the island of Cuba. Under that matrix, suddenly everything adds up clearly. Under that matrix, the actions of RFK covering up the real circumstances of his own brother’s murder make complete and concrete sense.
Then,
covering up Oswald’s links to U.S. Intelligence suddenly becomes comprehensible. The obvious “national security” cover-up that followed is then logical. If we look at the events through that refreshed perspective, we begin to finally understand what it really is that we’ve been looking at all this time. There’s more on that point below.

Now let’s look at some of the scenarios out there. Many theories exist for the real cause of the JFK assassination—and many can be easily dismissed as implausible. For example, the Russians being involved makes absolutely no sense whatsoever—if anything, they were actively involved in attempting to
thwart
the assassination (see
The Man Who Knew Too Much
by Dick Russell). The Soviets knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had much better political prospects with JFK remaining President. They were in the throws of enduring severe economic hardships as a result of the costs of the Cold War and were eager for continuing the softening of those pressures that the Kennedy Administration was offering in the post Cuban Missile Crisis environment.

Here are some others:

Oswald Acted Alone

The theory that Oswald killed JFK is exactly that—a theory, and a preposterous one at that. It has been touted in books by The Warren Commission, Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi. They are what we call “conspiracy-closers”; they’re like closing pitchers in baseball games who come in to try to slam the door shut on the opposition. They have an
agenda.
They typically “begin” by concluding that Oswald acted alone, rather than objectively weighing
all
of the evidence. The evidence, objectively evaluated in its totality, indicates that it wasn’t even
possible
that Oswald acted alone. If that isn’t clear by now then,
Homework Assignment:
read the JFK chapter of this book.

Mafia “Hit”

“The minute that bullet hit Jack Kennedy’s head, it was all over. Right then. The Organized Crime Program just stopped, and Hoover took control back.”
²⁷¹

—Bill Hundley, Organized Crime Section, U.S. Dept. of Justice

The word on the streets of Chicago in 1963 was that if Chuck Nicoletti got a contract with your name on it,
you were already dead—
you just didn’t know it yet. Charles (Chuck) Nicoletti was the premier hit man in the 1950s and 60s for “Chicago”—the Organized Crime empire stretching across the nation and dominating most organized criminal enterprises in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami Beach.

It has been established that Nicoletti was in Dallas with a high-powered rifle on the morning of the assassination.
²⁷²
In his “work book,” a professional calendar of sorts, Nicoletti reportedly made the following entry for November 22, 1963, chilling in its stark simplicity:

“Dallas—JFK”
²⁷³

Few Americans are fully aware of the dramatic findings of the 1979
Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations,
which concluded:

“There is solid evidence that ... Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante— three of the most important targets for criminal prosecution by the Kennedy Administration—had discussions with their subordinates about murdering President Kennedy. Associates of Hoffa, Trafficante, and Marcello were in direct contact with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the ‘lone assassin’ of the President. Although members of the Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy’s assassination, had knowledge of much of this information at the time of their inquiry, they chose not to follow it up.”
²⁷⁴

The preceding conclusion is practically an open indictment of the main investigative body of the assassination of the 35
^th
President of the United States. That bears noting.

CONFESSIONS REGARDING THE MURDER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY

“Their own confessions now show that three Mafia bosses—Car-los Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli—were behind JFK’s assassination. They used parts of the secret coup plan to kill JFK in a way that forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and high CIA official Richard Helms to withhold crucial information not only from the public and the press, but also from each other and sometimes their own investigators.”
²⁷⁵

The following conversation took place between Florida godfather Santo Traf- ficante and his friend and Miami businessman, Jose Aleman, shortly before the assassination of President Kennedy:

Government wiretaps and Mafia informants have provided detailed confessions of direct involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.

•“Recently declassified FBI documents confirm that just a few years before his own death,
Carlos Marcello
confessed on three occasions to informants that he had had JFK killed.”
²⁷⁷

•
“Santo Trafficante
had been recruited in the CIA’s plots to kill Castro months before JFK became president. Like Marcello, Trafficante later confessed his involvement in JFK’s assassination.”
²⁷⁸

•
“Johnny Roselli,
according to his biographers, also claimed to know what really happened in Dallas ... Internal CIA reports admit that they recruited Roselli and Trafficante for their own plots to assassinate Castro prior to JFK’s election in I960.”
²⁷⁹

Confessions of involvement in the JFK assassination came in later years from Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Johnny Roselli, John Martino and David Morales. Deliberate misinformation that was planted to link the assassination to Cuba was also traced to the above-named.

Carlos Marcello:
Marcello stated: “I had the little son-of-a-bitch killed, and I’d do it again ... I wish I could have done it myself.”
²⁸⁰
(spoken to FBI informant; FBI Document 124-10182-10430)

Santo Trafficante:
Trafficante stated: “Carlos fucked up. We should not have killed John. We should have killed Bobby.”
²⁸¹
(deathbed statement to his attorney; spoken in Sicilian)

Santo Trafficante:
Mafia figures who were scheduled to talk to investigating committees add up to another bit of circumstantial evidence that is not easy to ignore. When Sam Giancana was found shot to death with five bullet holes around his mouth, Santos Trafficante said, “Now there are only two people who know who shot Kennedy. And they aren’t talking.”
²⁸²
(spoken telephonically on FBI wiretap in 1975, after the murder of Sam Giancana)

David Morales:
“Well, we took care of
that
son of a bitch, didn’t we?”
²⁸³
(spoken to associates, during a drunken rant on JFK)

John Martino:
Confessed to his role in the organizational involvement of the JFK assassination (on several occasions to family members and also to two friends, shortly before his death).
²⁸⁴

Johnny Roselli:
“Before he died, Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged President Kennedy’s murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro.”
²⁸⁵
(Jack Anderson;
Washington Post
; September 9, 1976; cited by: Louis Stokes, House Select Committee on Assassinations; September 28, 1978)

Joe Granata:
Granata was a credible FBI informant and close associate of notorious Chicago Mafia hit man Chuck Nicoletti. Granata testified that Nico- letti confessed to him, on several occasions, the direct involvement of Nicoletti, Johnny Roselli, Jimmy Sutton (a.k.a. James Files) and Marshal Caifano in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
²⁸⁶
It should be added that Roselli’s role would almost certainly not have been as an actual shooter—he was known as “Handsome Johnny” and renowned for being a charmer, not a killer—however the story apparently evolved into that over the years, as Mafia folklore has the habit of doing.

Frank Sheeran:
Sheeran was a well-known Mafia hit man. He made deathbed confessions in 2004 that he and
Jimmy Hoffa
provided high-powered rifles for the Kennedy assassination and that Hoffa confessed to him that he had direct knowledge of high-level Mafia involvement in the murder.
²⁸⁷

Frank Fiorini a.k.a. Frank Sturgis:
“We did Watergate because Nixon wanted to stop the leakage of information on our role in the assassination of Kennedy.”
²⁸⁸

CIA Coup

The most common theory—”The CIA Did It”—is problematic because it contains several flaws in reasoning—and the most common reason contains the most fallacious reasoning. As it’s often stated: The CIA (therefore, the Government) had to have done it because
only
the Government could have covered it up. That almost sounds logical, until we fully examine the premises and conclusion of the equation.

For openers, one person who was instrumental in the cover-up was none other than Robert F. Kennedy. The acts of Robert Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the assassination clearly reveal a pattern in which he was actually a
primary
player in the construction of the cover-up.

It’s an often overlooked fact that the most powerful person in the United States on the afternoon of November 22, 1963 was actually
not
the newly sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson. He had not yet fully taken the reins of power. It was Robert F. Kennedy. Johnson, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, was basically a figurehead. Allegiance, as well as real authority, was rested in the Attorney General. While President Kennedy was alive, it was often commented that the Administration was really like a “dual-Presidency”—one in which RFK shared as much of the real power and responsibility as JFK. At the moment that President Kennedy was assassinated, true rank-and-file allegiance immediately shifted, by default, from President Kennedy to Attorney General Kennedy.

So what was Robert Kennedy actually doing on the afternoon of November 22 and afterward? Drastic actions were afoot:

•We know that he contacted a “security agent” whom he knew he could trust: CIA operative Hugh Huggins, who immediately boarded a jet, personally attended the autopsy, and reported directly to Bobby Kennedy.
²⁸⁹

•We know that he immediately registered recognition of the name “Oswald” and called a contact in the anti-Castro camp in Florida, yelling into the telephone: “One of your guys did it!”
²⁹⁰