Legacy of Secrecy (149 page)

level-three facility where most prisoners had few comforts. However,

Marcello was not like most other prisoners, and he soon found ways to

receive extraordinary privileges.

During Marcello’s stay at Texarkana, he became the target of yet

another undercover FBI sting operation: CAMTEX (for “Carlos Mar-

cello, Texas”). As revealed for the first time in this book, CAMTEX

resulted in Carlos Marcello’s clear confession to having ordered JFK’s

assassination. In Chapter 3, we quoted Marcello’s confession, made in

front of two witnesses, as reported by the FBI Informant who shared

Marcello’s prison cell in Texarkana. The following provides dramatic

new information from declassified files at the National Archives about

Marcello’s admission, the Informant (whose full name is in some of the

files, and has been confirmed by the authors), and how the FBI recorded

hundreds of hours of secret tapes of Marcello discussing his crimes.

The fifty-six-year-old Informant arrived in Texarkana from Tampa to

serve an eight-year sentence. The Informant wrote that in his “crowded

dorm with a hundred other guys . . . there was not much to see,” except

“the hallway, the dorm I lived in, a TV lounge, and at the end of the hall

lots of little rooms. I thought to myself,
If you behave you get one of the

little rooms
.” Then “I saw a little man that looked like he just stepped

out of a band box” (evoking the smartly dressed big-band leaders of the

1940s). The little man’s “clothes were new and pressed and his shoes

were shined. This guy was really sharp . . . a guy standing near me said,

‘That’s Carlos Marcello. He runs this place; a good friend to have.’ It did

not take long to see the guy was right. Marcello went where he pleased

and did what he wanted. He had one of the little rooms, so I guess he

was big time.”4

The Informant saw that some “of the inmates hung around [Marcello],

trying to get his attention.” Marcello “was on the phone all the time,”

and the Informant thought “he must have a lot of friends to call.” Several

days later, the Informant sat down beside Marcello “in the lounge. He

was reading a paper and did not notice me. When he finished reading

he said, ‘Hello, I’m Carlos Marcello.’ I shook his hand and told him my

name . . . he asked me if I had heard any news about” a governor who

was being prosecuted for corruption. Marcello “got up to leave and said,

‘If you need anything look me up.’”

That fateful meeting took place in March 1985, and the Informant

wrote that as time passed, he and Marcello “became friends, in a strange

sort of way . . . since I was older than most of the inmates, I guess he

was drawn to me.” Marcello had recently turned seventy-five, mean-

ing he and the Informant were much older than the average Texarkana

inmate.

Even after Marcello’s imprisonment, his criminal empire continued,

albeit at a reduced size. Marcello’s biographer John Davis says that Mar-

cello’s “most trusted brother, Joe, was supposed to have taken over as de

facto boss of what was left of the Marcello organization.” The main goal

of FBI agent Thomas Kimmel, who created and supervised the CAMTEX

operation, was to find out how Carlos Marcello controlled his criminal

organization from prison.

Kimmel arranged for veteran FBI agent Tom Kirk, nearing retirement,

to work undercover on this one last assignment. Kirk would go to the

prison on visiting day and appear to be the Informant’s best friend.

Kirk’s “cover identity” would be that of a shady businessman hunting

for opportunities, even if they were illegal. A local Texas FBI man, whom

Kimmel described as “a terrific agent,” would complete the team, work-

ing with Kirk, Kimmel, and the Informant. FBI headquarters in Washing-

ton authorized the CAMTEX operation against Marcello, since it echoed

the BRILAB sting that had sent him to prison in the first place.

Despite the Informant’s worries, the first few weeks went smoothly,

and one visiting day the Informant casually introduced Kirk to Carlos

Marcello. The Informant said, “Kirk thought that it was great that he

could meet Marcello, but it was easy, as Marcello always wanted to be

in the limelight.”5 They gradually began to draw Marcello into a series

of illegal business schemes, detailed at length in the FBI files. But none

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worked, for various reasons, not the least of which was Marcello’s

caution.

So, the Informant explained, “the FBI asked the (Prison’s) Unit Man-

ager to move me into Marcello’s room with him. Some days later this

was accomplished.”6 Marcello’s former roommate was moved to another

cell, and now the FBI had installed its Informant in Marcello’s private

cell. This was an unparalleled opportunity for the FBI and the Justice

Department, so it’s not surprising that the Informant would soon be

told that reports of his work were reaching even US Attorney General

Edwin Meese.

After spending time as Marcello’s roommate, the Informant had heard

enough from the godfather to know that “the only thing Marcello was

really interested in was getting out of prison. He had a standing offer

with any attorney of a million dollars if they could get him released from

prison.” That knowledge gave the FBI a new goal for its sting, and the

Informant was soon telling Marcello that his “best friend” (Kirk) knew

someone in the Bureau of Prisons who could arrange a transfer to a more

comfortable prison—for the right price.

After the Informant gave the FBI important information from Mar-

cello about the trial of a governor, Agent Kirk told the Informant “he

was going to report to his boss and try for a wiretap of the prison.”7 The

Informant said, “Two weeks later, Kirk came to see me. He said, ‘Well,

a judge is going to give us a wiretap on this evidence.’”

Kirk told the Informant that “the Unit phone in the hall would be

bugged and that I would have a bug in the room that I shared with

Marcello. I was told to buy a Panasonic radio in the (prison) store. I

bought the radio and [the Unit Manager] came to the room and said

that he would have to take the radio away to see if it was legal for me

to have. I called Kirk and he told me that the bug was being installed

in the radio and it would be returned when they were finished. On the

17th of September,” the Unit Manager “brought the radio back and told

me that I could have it.”

Once the Informant was alone with the specially modified transistor

radio, he “thought to myself here I am in this little room with the head

of the Mafia from New Orleans, with a radio with a bug inside. I was

really scared. If I was found out, I was dead.”8

Internal FBI memos, Kimmel, and other FBI sources all confirm the

Informant’s account of the dangerous bugging operation. A “Priority”

memo sent from the Dallas FBI office to the Director of the FBI confirms

that the Informant “was roommate of New Orleans organized crime

boss Carlos Marcello at Federal Correctional Institution, Texarkana,

Texas,” and “was instrumental in furnishing probable cause to initiate

Title III coverage of Marcello and prison telephone.” The memo also

confirms that the Informant “successfully introduced FBI undercover

agent to Marcello.”9

Kimmel verified that the “Title III” coverage approved by the judge

covered both the special transistor radio and the phone tap. The Infor-

mant says the bugging operation against Marcello yielded “hundreds

of hours” of tapes, something Kimmel also confirms. However, Kimmel

told us that the FBI listened to every tape, but would transcribe a par-

ticular tape only if Marcello mentioned something of interest.

The Informant doesn’t mention the JFK-Almeida coup plan in his

notes in the FBI files, but he does say that Marcello “was always talking

about . . . things I knew nothing about.” It would be interesting to see if

there are any comments about Cuba, Martin Luther King’s assassina-

tion, or Joseph Milteer on the hundreds of hours of secret tapes the FBI’s

Informant made of Marcello, but they have never been released.

As Marcello and the Informant gradually grew closer over the follow-

ing months, Marcello shared more of his background and experiences.

By December 1985, after a Marcello family member had paid a bribe to

soon move the godfather to a much better prison, Marcello had come

to view the Informant as a trusted friend.10

“The last month that we spent together—December—we talked a

lot,” the Informant told the FBI. “Marcello seemed to be very upset about

the Kennedys. This is all he would talk about. I was so tired of hearing

about his so-called kidnapping that it played on my nerves. That is all

he talked about, no matter where we were.”

We noted earlier that Marcello had told the Informant and another

trusted inmate from New Orleans about “his meeting with Oswald,”

and that Marcello “had been introduced to Oswald by a man named

Ferris [Ferrie], Marcello’s pilot.” Marcello had also told them “about

Jack Ruby, [whom] Marcello had . . . set . . . up in the bar business” in

Dallas, and that “Ruby would come to Churchill Farms to report to

Marcello.”11

On December 15, 1985, the Informant and Marcello “were sitting out-

side in the patio” of the prison yard. Referring to the same trusted indi-

vidual who had worked for Marcello’s brother and had heard Marcello

talk about Oswald and Ruby, the Informant wrote, “My friend came over

to join us.” (The friend/witness is named in one of the FBI files.) Marcello

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then embarked upon a blazing tirade about the Kennedys. After Mar-

cello blurted out his admission of having JFK killed, he “stopped, real-

izing what he had said, and turned and walked over to some other

inmates. My friend looked at me, and said, ‘I don’t know about you,

but I did not hear anything.’ My friend left, and I could see that he was

upset. I was in shock. I never believed that the little man would admit

that he had conspired to kill the President. We went back to our room

and nothing else was said” about the matter, that day or the next.12

Marcello’s confession quoted earlier in the book came from a detailed

account in FBI files, written three years later by the Informant for the

head of the San Francisco FBI. Yet it is remarkably consistent with the

following internal FBI memo, written shortly after Marcello blurted out

his confession. This FBI memo names the Informant but cautions that

his name shouldn’t be “disclosed in a report or otherwise unless [he

has] to be a witness in a trial or hearing.” It confirms that the Infor-

mant “has provided reliable information in the past.” It goes on to say,

“On December 15, 1985, he was in the company of Carlos Marcello and

another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institute, Texarkana, Texas,

in the courtyard engaged in conversation. Carlos Marcello discussed his

intense dislike of former President John Kennedy as he often did. Unlike

other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion Carlos

Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, ‘Yeah, I had the son of a

bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.’”13

The consistency of the wording, date, witness, and circumstances

across three years give the Informant’s statement a high degree of cred-

ibility. After telling the FBI about Marcello’s admission, the Informant

was willing to take a lie-detector test about it. The Informant had nothing

to gain by making up such an admission, since he would antagonize the

very FBI agents he was risking his life to help if he failed the test, or the

witness denied it. Also, the Informant didn’t try to leverage Marcello’s

JFK admission for anything else. Finally, by reporting Marcello’s JFK

confession to the FBI, the Informant increased the chance that Marcello

would take potentially lethal action against him, if the godfather ever

found out.

Given the trust that had developed between Marcello and the Infor-

mant—to the extent that Marcello had his family bribe the Informant’s

“best friend” (Kirk) to move Marcello to a more comfortable prison—

it’s not unreasonable that while raging against the Kennedys, Marcello

would have impulsively blurted out the confession as he did such

remarks. By that time, the Informant had become Marcello’s trusted

prison confidante. However, two days later, when Marcello was in a

calmer frame of mind, he realized he needed to do something about his

JFK revelation. After all, Marcello had for years kept a sign in his office

that read: THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET, IF TWO ARE DEAD.

The Informant says that “on the 17th of December I was packing,

to leave the next day” for the level-two Seagoville Prison near Dallas,

where Marcello would soon follow. “Marcello was out making his calls.