Legacy of Secrecy (12 page)

slightly, since Moldea asserted that the assassination of Alderman Lewis

was “the 977th unsolved underworld hit in Chicago since the early

1900s.”5

Marcello’s associates were even willing to target Bobby Kennedy. As

mentioned earlier, Marcello’s relationship with Hoffa went back to at

least September 1960, when Marcello personally gave Hoffa $500,000 for

Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy. That

meeting was witnessed by Louisiana Teamster official Ed Partin, and

shortly after receiving the money, the Eisenhower-Nixon administra-

tion dropped criminal charges against Hoffa.6 By late 1962, Partin had

begun helping the government and had agreed to testify against Hoffa

for Bobby Kennedy’s Get Hoffa Squad, headed by Walter Sheridan.

Partin told Bobby’s men that in the summer of 1962, Hoffa had talked

about having Bobby assassinated by using “a gunman equipped with

a rifle with a telescopic sight [while Bobby was] in the South . . . riding

in a convertible.” Hoffa had talked to the informant because “Hoffa

believed him to be close to various figures in Carlos Marcello’s syndicate

organization.”7

However, nothing happened to Bobby at that time, and Marcello may

have had something to do with it. About a month after Hoffa talked about

his plans to kill Bobby, two of Marcello’s trusted associates introduced

him to Ed Becker, an FBI informant. While at the immense Churchill

Farms property, Marcello told Becker that if Bobby were assassinated,

JFK would simply send in “the Army” to get whoever was responsible.

Marcello later told another companion the same thing, saying that if

Bobby were shot, then JFK “calls out the National Guard.” Clearly, Mar-

cello wanted to avoid another disaster like the National Guard’s take-

over of Phenix City. Marcello explained that the best way to effectively

end Bobby’s war against the Mafia and Hoffa was to kill JFK instead.

Marcello said that since LBJ disliked Bobby so much, once the President

was dead, Bobby’s power would be over.8

New information, published here for the first time, shows how Marcello

came to his decision to kill JFK, and offers the first information from

FBI files tying Marcello directly to Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

These revelations provide unique insight into Marcello and his actions,

because they are in the words of someone who heard them directly from

Marcello himself, in many long talks with the Mafia chief. Marcello’s

confidant was a trusted FBI informant, for an undercover operation

targeting Marcello (CAMTEX, for Carlos Marcello, Texas) that has never

been revealed until now.

The Marcello informant’s credibility was confirmed to us by two

former FBI agents who worked on the case, including the supervisor of

the operation, Thomas A. Kimmel. The files themselves also confirm the

informant’s reliability. FBI memos note that a federal judge found the

informant’s reporting so solid that he authorized extraordinary surveil-

lance on Marcello while he was in prison. This included not just phone

taps, but even an FBI bug in a special transistor radio the informant

kept in the small prison cell he eventually shared with Marcello. These

devices yielded “hundreds of hours” of tapes of Marcello, according to

the files, a trove of information previously unknown to historians and

journalists.

Most of the following information about Marcello comes from recently

declassified FBI files, discovered at the National Archives in September

2006. They cover the time when Marcello was finally serving a long

prison sentence, but before debilitating illness overtook him. These files

show that the informant also helped FBI offices in San Francisco and

Tampa target other criminals in the late 1980s, including one crime fam-

ily that is still active. The FBI files praise the informant for helping them

target “Colombian drug fugitive Jorge Luis Ochoa,” described by the

DEA as “the head of the Medellín drug cartel.” Ochoa was convicted in

1991, but his unexpected release from prison in 1996 allowed his family

to continue being a major force in the drug trade today; Ochoa’s brother

is currently fighting to overturn his thirty-year federal prison term.9

As one might expect of a trusted informant who helped the FBI target

the criminal organizations of Marcello and Ochoa, an FBI memo states

that the “Informant’s name is not to be disclosed in report or otherwise

unless it has been decided definitely that he is to be a witness in a trial

or hearing.”10 About a third of the internal FBI memos don’t use the

informant’s actual name—they refer to him as “the Informant” or use

his FBI informant number—but some memos use his real name exten-

sively. While these allowed us to verify his personal information and

background, for his safety and that of his family, we will refer to him

simply as “the Informant.” We have also excluded a small amount of

personal information that might identify him. However, all of the quotes

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

that follow are from the Informant. They are his own words, from the

new FBI files in which he wrote what Marcello told him; we have made

only minor corrections for grammar and spelling.

Carlos Marcello and the Informant were incarcerated together at Tex-

arkana Federal Prison in 1985. They eventually became roommates in

the two-man cell that afforded the Mafia boss far more privacy than the

large dormitory rooms that housed most inmates; even in prison, Mar-

cello received extraordinary privileges and special treatment. The Infor-

mant writes that he became “pretty good friends” with Marcello, and

that they “would talk for hours about his early life in New Orleans. He

told me about all the gambling clubs that he had owned in New Orleans

and all over. He told me how he had got started running the Mafia in

Louisiana. This man had done everything at one time or another. He

told me the way to make and keep money was to buy ground,” meaning

real estate. Marcello told the Informant “he owned hundreds of acres

of ground that he had bought for peanuts and now it was worth mil-

lions.” Marcello’s real estate holdings in Louisiana and cities like Dallas

were extensive, including his 6,400-acre Churchill Farms estate outside

New Orleans, once mostly swampland. After extensive parts had been

drained, Marcello used its remote farmhouse for some of his most pri-

vate meetings—including some prior to JFK’s assassination.

As a result of the Informant’s long talks with Marcello, he began “to

understand Marcello better and better. He was an uneducated slob that

had taken everything that he had by force. Anyone that got in the way of

what he wanted was eliminated one way or another. He told me about

the bars and liquor business in New Orleans. He never bought bars; he

took them. Marcello would send men to see the owner that he wanted

to do business with. The owner was told that from now on, you will be

selling our liquor. If the bar owner made trouble or refused, fights were

staged, furniture broken up, and the guests harassed. Whores were sent

in to cause trouble. The owner of the bar either went out of business or

went into partnership with Marcello. Marcello had his own still in New

Orleans and also shipped liquor in from Texas, in five-gallon cans. Since

all of the police were on the payroll, it did no good to call them; he had

them all in his pocket, along with the Judges.”

In addition to Marcello’s seemingly legitimate businesses, the Mafia

chief told the Informant that if someone wanted to operate vice in New

Orleans, they had to go through Marcello, who “made millions over the

years, and all tax-free.” Marcello also said that “in the early days, he had

gambling casinos, but this was stopped.” Marcello had indeed controlled

several lavish but illegal gambling clubs around New Orleans, until Con-

gressional hearings in the 1950s focused too much attention on them.

But Marcello wasn’t really out of the gambling business—as he told

the Informant, his Louisiana gambling operations simply “went under-

ground.” The investigations of Robert Kennedy and the New Orleans

Crime Commission bear this out, revealing that Marcello’s gambling

interests continued to gross hundreds of millions of dollars in 1963.

In addition, Marcello told the Informant “that he was partners with a

man that ran the Mafia in Florida, [named] Trafficante. They were part-

ners in a casino in Cuba, and made millions before Castro took over and

shut them down.” While Santo Trafficante’s role in Cuban casinos was

well known to law enforcement and historians, Marcello’s involvement

there has always been more difficult to pin down. Since Marcello wasn’t

a citizen and was in the US illegally, frequent travel to Cuba would have

been risky for him when reentering the United States. But by working

through Trafficante—who also utilized their mutual friend Johnny Ros-

selli to help manage casinos in Cuba, along with Jack Ruby’s good friend

Lewis McWillie—Marcello could reap the benefits of pre-Castro Havana

without taking undue risk.

Marcello also told the Informant about his first Las Vegas casino busi-

ness. The godfather said that he “tried to get into gambling in Vegas” by

using a front man, and “all was going good until the Nevada Gaming

Commission learned that Carlos Marcello was involved. They were shut

down and lost a great deal of money in the venture.” This statement

refers to Marcello’s initial role in the Tropicana hotel and casino in 1957,

a deal brokered by Johnny Rosselli. Marcello told the Informant “that

he stayed clear of Vegas after that.”

According to a report by the Informant in his FBI file, “By far the

most important thing that I reported to the FBI was Marcello’s hatred

for the Kennedys. In the early 1960s, Robert Kennedy was after anyone

involved in organized crime. He was after Marcello and wanted him

deported in the worst way. Marcello was born in Tunisia, North Africa.

Kennedy knew that he was not a citizen, and played on this angle to

have him deported. Marcello had to report to INS each month in New

Orleans. One time when he reported [in April 1961], he was loaded on

a plane and flown to Guatemala in [Central] America.” (With the help

of Rosselli and pilot David Ferrie, Marcello had arranged for a fake

Guatemalan birth certificate.)

Marcello told the Informant that “the governments of these coun-

tries did not want Marcello, and he was forced to move on to another

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

country. He . . . spent thousands as payola [to officials], but when the

money ran out he would have to move on.” Finally, Marcello was able

to buy “new papers in Guatemala and returned to the [United States]

through Florida. He said he hid out for a long time and moved around

so he would not get caught. He finally turned himself in and was placed

in a camp in Brownsville. His attorneys fought the case in court and he

was allowed to stay. Marcello was furious and vowed to get even with

the Kennedys.”11 However, the Kennedys weren’t going to let Marcello

stay in the United States without a fight; their determination resulted

in the court case that Marcello faced in November 1963.

Before talking to the Informant about JFK’s assassination, Marcello

first mentioned his contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby,

in a casual way, while talking about his criminal operations in New

Orleans. There was only one other inmate whom Marcello felt comfort-

able talking to about his activities there. The Informant “had another

friend at Texarkana [Prison] that had worked for Marcello’s brother, as

a bartender. The ‘little man’ would let him come to our room and they

would talk about New Orleans for hours. One night, Marcello was talk-

ing about the Kennedys. He told me and my friend about a meeting with

Oswald. He had been introduced to Oswald by a man named Ferris [Fer-

rie] who was Marcello’s pilot. He said that the [meeting] had taken place

in his brother’s restaurant. He said that he thought that Oswald [was]

crazy. They had several meetings with Oswald before he left town.”12

The Informant said that Marcello “also told us about Jack Ruby. Mar-

cello had met him in Dallas, Texas. He set him up in the bar business

there. He said that Ruby was a homo son-of-a-bitch, but good to have

around to report to him what was happening in town. Marcello told us

that all the police were on the take, and as long as he kept the money

flowing they let him operate anything in Dallas that he wanted to. Ruby

would come to Churchill Farms to report to Marcello, so the little man

knew what was happening all the time.”13

Eventually, Marcello made a clear confession about JFK’s assassina-

tion to the Informant, in front of a named witness. According to FBI

files at the National Archives, the Informant wrote that “Marcello was

talking about his favorite subject: the Kennedys and being deported. He