Legacy of Secrecy (104 page)

tion about Marcello, was still two years away from publication, and in

the fall of 1967 there was no way to know if it would ever see print.

Carlos Marcello still faced a pending charge of slugging an FBI agent

at the New Orleans airport in 1966, but his trial was at least half a year

away, and could be stalled by still more legal delays. In late 1967, the

FBI’s attitude about Marcello was in a state of flux. At the top, J. Edgar

Hoover still refused to make Marcello a priority or authorize the kind

of phone taps or planted bugs he had used against Martin Luther King

and Marina Oswald. Regis Kennedy, the FBI agent who pronounced

Marcello nothing more than a tomato salesman, was still in the New

Orleans office, though he was in the process of retiring. It’s hard to say

if Regis Kennedy’s feelings were his own or merely reflected what had

been Hoover’s policy on Marcello since the 1950s.8

While some of the New Orleans agents apparently shared Regis Ken-

nedy’s lax attitude toward Marcello, others—like those involved in the

airport slugging incident—were at least trying to gather information

against such an obvious target. Realistically, Hoover couldn’t tell too

many people in the FBI about whatever blackmail material Marcello

had on him. So, as younger agents joined the Bureau, they couldn’t

understand why headquarters didn’t go after the Louisiana godfather.

New Orleans FBI files from 1967–1968 reveal an increasing number of

low-level informants providing second- and thirdhand information

about Marcello’s movements. Perhaps some agents wanted to be ready

for the time when their elderly FBI director finally retired or passed

away, and they could at last go after Marcello in a serious way. Mar-

cello might have been aware of some of the FBI’s informants through

Regis Kennedy, but the basic level of information most of the informants

provided—Marcello lived here, drove there, stopped at this store, met

with this longtime associate—would have given Marcello little cause for

concern.

As we mentioned earlier, Marcello’s workdays in 1967 consisted

largely of receiving visitors at his office behind the Town and Country

Motel, from mobsters (including Mafia chiefs from other parts of the

country) to prominent businessmen to politicians, all making propos-

als or asking for help. Especially sensitive meetings took place in the

farmhouse on his huge Churchill Farms estate, and Marcello frequently

traveled to other parts of his empire for a firsthand look at land and

business deals.

At some point in the latter part of 1967, Joseph Milteer was likely

one of Marcello’s visitors, asking what it would take for the godfather

to arrange a contract on Martin Luther King. It wouldn’t be the first

time a white supremacist had considered such a thing. Congressional

investigators reported that just six years earlier, the imperial wizard of

the New Orleans Ku Klux Klan had told a Klan meeting that “Southern

racial problems could be eliminated only by the murder of Dr. King

and that he had a New Orleans underworld associate ‘who would kill

anyone for a price.’”9

Carlos Marcello’s personal involvement in brokering a murder

contract would essentially amount to having a few meetings with

only trusted associates—his enormous power had grown from being

extremely cautious in such matters. We know from the BRILAB infor-

mant and the FBI’s later prison informant how Marcello typically oper-

ated when someone brought him a proposal. If it intrigued him, he

518

LEGACY OF SECRECY

would say he needed to talk to some people first, and would then get

back to the person making the request. Like any good businessman

or gambler, Marcello always tried to lay off most or all of the risk and

actual work onto others. After checking with his appropriate associates,

Marcello would make his decision. If he thought the rewards justified

the risk (most of which would be borne by others), Marcello would come

back with a deal—take it or leave it, with no negotiation. That’s why the

$300,000 figure (more than $1.8 million today) in the Justice Department

memo may be accurate, and is considerably higher than the $50,000–

$100,000 Milteer and his partners may have offered originally.10

In addition to the money, the Justice Department memo said, Marcello

hoped to gain leverage over the “segregationists” for future deals or

blackmail, but Marcello would have been willing to consider helping

Milteer for other reasons as well. John H. Davis wrote about FBI wire-

taps documenting that Marcello was “an avid racist” who hated African

Americans from the time he began his Mafia career selling drugs in the

black areas of New Orleans. His use of the n-word was constant, even

when referring to black politicians, since Marcello saw blacks as “sub-

human, chattel to be exploited [and was] vigorously opposed to civil

rights . . . and detested its leaders.” Carlos Marcello’s close ally Lean-

der Perez, Louisiana’s powerful political boss, had established White

Citizens’ Council chapters in more than half of the parishes in the state,

totaling one hundred thousand members. Marcello was “an enthusiastic

supporter of the Ku Klux Klan” and tolerated black voters only because

he could deliver their votes to his politicians.11

Because of Martin Luther King, Carlos Marcello’s ability to control

black voters and exploit them in other ways was starting to change. The

race riots in the summers of 1966 and 1967 would have worried Mar-

cello, especially the 1967 riots in Tampa, Memphis, and Atlanta, since

they could be the harbingers of even more problems in the South. In the

days before legal state lotteries, the Mafia’s illegal lotteries, the “num-

bers” or “policy” rackets, targeted America’s ghettos and minority com-

munities. As with today’s legal lotteries, they preyed disproportionately

on poor and desperate minorities, many of whom gambled regularly in

an attempt to win a better life for their families. Along with the sale of

drugs to minorities, the numbers racket generated a steady cash flow

for Marcello, some of which he used for regular payoffs to local officials.

Any disruption to that steady stream of money—even something short

of a riot, such as a demonstration or boycott—was bad for Marcello.

Carlos Marcello would have been concerned about the riot in Tampa

because of his long-standing business associate Santo Trafficante, but

the Memphis race riot on July 20, 1967, had a more direct impact on

Marcello’s bottom line. Marcello didn’t control Memphis, as he did New

Orleans or Houston, but he did wield influence there through the Mem-

phis Mafia, sometimes called “the Cartel.” Arthur Baldwin, a nightclub

owner and “government informant who worked closely with the Mar-

cello organization in Memphis,” described that relationship to Ray’s last

lawyer. The Justice Department later confirmed “that Baldwin assisted

the government in federal investigations.”12

Marcello shared control of the state of Mississippi with the Memphis

Cartel, which managed the northern third of the state, while Marcello

controlled organized crime in the rest, including the state’s main cities:

Jackson, Gulfport, and Biloxi. According to journalist James Dickerson,

the Cartel had diversified into “construction, land development, and

various legitimate storefront businesses . . . but beneath that veneer of

respectability operated the same old network of graft, extortion, and

political corruption” that was familiar to Marcello. Microphone experts

in the Memphis recording industry helped the Memphis Cartel pioneer

the mob’s use of electronic surveillance, giving it a degree of protec-

tion from law enforcement since “they knew more about the science of

recording than did the FBI.” Starting in the 1950s, Marcello had allowed

the Cartel to set up legitimate businesses in New Orleans; in return

they allowed Marcello “to form a joint venture with [Trafficante] for the

transpiration and sale of illegal drugs in Memphis.”13

Marcello had further ties to the city through the Liberto family, not-

ably Memphis produce dealer Frank C. Liberto, who was named in the

Justice Department memo. Liberto confirmed his Mafia ties to a witness

and reminisced “that as a youngster he used to push a vegetable cart

with Carlos Marcello in New Orleans.” According to Marcello’s biog-

rapher, John H. Davis, “the FBI determined that Frank’s New Orleans

brother was . . . an associate of Carlos Marcello.” Also part of the clan

was Jack Liberto, Marcello’s bodyguard and barber. Jack Liberto had

been present for Marcello’s fall 1962 threat to kill JFK, and FBI files con-

firm that he was still working closely with Marcello in 1967 and 1968.

These family connections, along with the involvement of both Marcello

and Liberto in the produce business, gave the two mobsters a cover for

working together: Soon after King’s assassination, Frank Liberto told

the FBI that he had to make “frequent trips to New Orleans for produce,

has relatives in New Orleans, and discusses large sums of money when

making produce purchases over the telephone.”14

520

LEGACY OF SECRECY

In addition to protecting his Southern cities from the effects of Dr.

King’s movement, Marcello had other reasons to seriously consider

Milteer’s proposal. Through a variety of law enforcement and political

contacts, including Sgt. de la Llana, Marcello could easily have learned

that Milteer’s small group was not on the radar screens of law enforce-

ment or the FBI—a fact that made cooperating with Milteer more attrac-

tive. Marcello would have had no qualms about aligning himself with

white supremacists like Milteer, since he had used Milteer and Guy

Banister in the JFK assassination.

Marcello could insist that Milteer and his group take on much of the

risk, especially after the crime had been committed. Hence, when Ray

would flee to Atlanta after King’s death, Ray wouldn’t contact a Mafioso;

he would call Milteer’s partner, Hugh Spake, instead, and Milteer him-

self would have to aid Ray’s flight from Atlanta.

How long Marcello considered Milteer’s proposal is not known, but

he probably would have consulted his closest ally among America’s mob

bosses, Santo Trafficante—especially since working on the King hit could

potentially affect the successful cover-up of their roles in JFK’s assassina-

tion. The recent Tampa riots, coupled with the disruption caused to the

drug route they shared in riot-torn Memphis, probably made Trafficante

amenable to Milteer’s proposal.

In every way, a hit on Martin Luther King would be simpler and far

less risky than JFK’s assassination. There was far less security for Dr.

King than there had been for President Kennedy; on the few occasions

King even had a security detail, it was usually small and unarmed. Other

than in Atlanta, King rarely trusted local or state police in the South, so

even if those officials heard any warnings or leaks about the hit, they

were unlikely to be quickly or effectively passed along to Dr. King’s

men. Many Southern police forces did not yet bar Klan membership, and

some public officials were either former KKK members or sympathetic

to the cause, a potentially useful factor as long as the hit happened in a

Southern city. By killing King in the South, Marcello and his allies would

know which members of local law enforcement were on the take or

amenable to a bribe. Also, in the South, even if the hit man were captured

alive, he was not likely to be convicted—and on the chance that he were,

his sentence would be light.

Using people from Marcello’s highly secure, ruthless drug network

had been effective in the JFK hit, and that strategy could be used again

if Marcello brokered the King contract. The CIA’s covert Cuban opera-

tions had been extremely useful in forcing an official cover-up after

JFK’s murder, and there might be a way to tap into that again, though

on a far smaller scale.

Compromising the government’s domestic surveillance programs

had been a key part of the JFK hit, and those programs had only increased

by 1967. In 1963, that effort had been directed primarily at the person

blamed for JFK’s murder, Oswald, whose surveillance had involved the

CIA, military intelligence, and the FBI. For King, it would be the reverse,

since King himself was the subject of massive, often illegal domestic

surveillance. That meant the best time to hit King would be not when

he was routinely leaving his home or office, but when he was subject

to an especially large amount of government surveillance. A hit then

would force authorities to go into cover-up mode, not to protect King’s

killers, but to protect their roles in a huge domestic spy program that

the America public wouldn’t begin to learn about fully for another eight