Legacy of Secrecy (21 page)

own experience meeting contacts at movie theaters, setting up the

time by phone and using “recognition procedures” that included code

phrases. In Oswald’s pocket on November 22 was half of a torn box

top, as if Oswald expected to meet someone who had the other half at

the theater.28 Veciana told us about meeting the CIA official who first

recruited Phillips, who gave Veciana half of a torn dollar bill to use as a

recognition procedure later. Oswald had a couple of torn dollar bills in

his room, and the torn-bill technique was also used in the Texas arm of

the French Connection heroin ring.29

John Martino, Rosselli and Trafficante’s Cuban exile associate, said

shortly before his death that “Oswald had been ‘put together’ by ‘anti-

Castro types.’” Martino knew what he was talking about; as we noted

earlier, he was acquainted with David Morales and had met with Mar-

cello, Banister, Trafficante, and Rosselli in 1963. Martino told his son he

even saw Oswald passing out the pro-Castro leaflets when Oswald was

arrested, and he explained that “Oswald didn’t know who he was work-

ing for. . . . He was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in Dallas on

the day of the assassination. “They were to meet Oswald in the theater

and get him out of the country. . . . ”30 However, according to Martino,

Oswald didn’t know that if he made it out of the theater, the plan was to

“eliminate him.” If Oswald appeared to have fled, or be fleeing, to Cuba

after JFK’s murder, that would have made the pressure to invade Cuba

tremendous, especially since (as Martino and his Mafia associates knew

all too well) the United States had a Cuban invasion plan ready to go.

Echoing Martino’s words that “Oswald didn’t know who he was

working for,” Oswald’s wife would say, long after the assassination,

that her husband had been “caught between two powers—the govern-

ment and organized crime.” According to the
San Jose Mercury News,

Marina said that “in retrospect, Oswald seemed professionally schooled

in secretiveness, and I believe he worked for the American government.

He was taught the Russian language when he was in the military. Do you

think that is usual, that an ordinary soldier is taught Russian? Also, he

got in and out of Russia quite easily, and he got me out quite easily.”31

At his job at the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald sometimes

used the pay phone near the first-floor lunchroom. On November 22,

1963, a foreman “saw Oswald near the telephone on the first floor” at

ten or fifteen minutes before noon (just thirty minutes before JFK was

shot). It’s not known what calls he may have made or received that day.

At noon, Oswald was still on the first floor, eating lunch in the small

first-floor lunchroom used by minority and disabled employees. Unlike

many employees, who started to drift out of the building on their lunch

break to await the arrival of JFK’s motorcade, Oswald seemed to have

other things on his mind.32

Chapter Seven

As JFK and Jackie were beginning their motorcade through Dallas on

November 22, 1963, Bobby Kennedy was having lunch at his Hickory

Hill estate in Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters. The visiting US

Attorney from New York, Robert Morgenthau, and his assistant joined

Bobby by the pool. Morgenthau had handled the prosecutions result-

ing from the arrest of Joe Valachi, the Mafia heroin operative whose

sensational televised Congressional testimony two months earlier had

electrified the nation, dragging mob secrets out of the shadows and into

American living rooms.

That Friday was a balmy Indian-summer day at Bobby’s, with weather

much like that in Dallas, and Bobby took a break for a bracing midday

swim. Doing so gave him time to reflect on the morning meeting he’d

had with his Mafia prosecutors at the Justice Department. Bobby must

have felt pleased, since tremendous progress was being made on all

fronts. Their investigation of a French Connection heroin bust in Texas,

the second in two years, was going well. A year earlier, drug enforce-

ment officers in Marcello-controlled Houston had seized twenty-two

pounds of heroin linked to Trafficante. The most recent bust centered on

a carload of heroin at the Texas–Mexico border that involved a Cuban

exile and the Montreal Mafia.1 Bobby knew from experience that heroin

traffickers could be ruthless, so he had arranged for the main witness

and his family to be placed under US protection in the coming months.

In 1963, no Federal Witness Protection Program existed yet, and even

arrangements to shield star Mafia witness Joe Valachi had to be done

on an ad-hoc basis.

Bobby’s morning meeting had also covered his Mafia prosecutors’

pressure on Santo Trafficante and members of the Chicago Mafia, led by

Sam Giancana. Bobby was pleased with that week’s release of
The Green

Felt Jungle,
a book that finally exposed Johnny Rosselli’s leading role in

Las Vegas on behalf of the Chicago mob. Bobby was no doubt relieved

that JFK had ended his relationship with Rosselli’s girlfriend, Judith

Campbell, a year and a half earlier, and that Campbell’s recent attempt

to contact JFK again—just after the Chicago assassination attempt—had

been rebuffed.

Most important for Bobby, he was awaiting a verdict in Carlos Marcel-

lo’s federal trial in New Orleans. A conviction would be the culmination

of a battle Bobby and JFK had been waging against Marcello since 1958,

and would result in Marcello’s being either imprisoned or permanently

deported from the United States.

Though Bobby kept his Mafia prosecutors separate from his Get Hoffa

Squad, he knew they must have enjoyed the headline in the November

22
New York Times
that proclaimed “Las Vegas: Casinos Get Millions in

Loans from Teamsters Fund.”2 The article was just one in a recent series

featuring information that Bobby’s men had supplied, highlighting the

ties of the Teamster president to casinos and gangsters. Hoffa himself

was being tried for jury tampering in Nashville, and had reportedly

tried to bribe a juror in that trial. Hoffa didn’t realize that Bobby had

a Teamster informer in Louisiana, who had revealed Hoffa’s threats

in the summer of 1962 about having Bobby assassinated in a car. We

can only imagine what Bobby must have felt each time he made the

trip by car from his Virginia home to his Justice Department office in

Washington.

One of the most pressing concerns on Bobby’s mind during his

November 22 lunch and swim was something that he couldn’t share

with Morgenthau, his Mafia prosecutors, or his Get Hoffa Squad: the

impending coup plan against Fidel Castro, just ten days away. Earlier in

the week, Bobby had completed his final meetings with his trusted exile

leaders: DIA files confirm he had met with Harry Williams and Manuel

Artime on November 17, the day before JFK’s Tampa motorcade, and

that the following day Bobby had met with the leader of the Fort Ben-

ning Cuban American troops. On November 21, Bobby had met again

with Harry Williams, for the last time before the coup.3

While Bobby had been meeting with his Mafia prosecutors that Friday

morning, Harry was at an important meeting that Bobby had arranged,

with CIA officials like Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick and E.

Howard Hunt.4 If no problems arose at the afternoon portion of the

meeting, Harry would proceed immediately to Miami, to the US base

at Guantanamo the next day, and then slip into Castro’s Cuba to meet

with Almeida.5 At that point, it would be too late for any breakthrough

in the secret peace negotiations to prevent the coup. Harry’s entry into

Cuba around November 25 would also coincide with Bobby’s revelation

94

LEGACY OF SECRECY

to Dean Rusk and other cabinet officials that all the planning they had

been doing in recent months was about to bear fruit, since they had

found someone powerful enough in the Cuban government to “elimi-

nate” Fidel and stage a coup.6

While Bobby knew that Cuban exile leaders Manuel Artime and

Tony Varona were now fully on board, he also realized that two others,

Manolo Ray and Eloy Menoyo, had not yet completely committed to

Harry. However, CIA files confirm that Harry had met with both men in

recent weeks to discuss what was generally going to happen, and that

money was being provided to each of them (in Ray’s case, more than

$100,000). Bobby and Harry were confident that both Ray and Menoyo

would cooperate fully once the coup began.

Like Harry, Bobby was sure that Almeida was sincere and not a double

agent, because of his willingness to put his own family under covert

US protection in another country. Still, if anything happened and the

coup turned into a disaster, one of Bobby’s associates indicated that the

Attorney General planned to do the same thing he had offered to do after

the Bay of Pigs fiasco: take full responsibility and resign, to minimize

the political damage to JFK. Bobby wouldn’t be risking his life during

the coup, like Harry and Almeida would, but he knew his own political

life was on the line.

Fully aware of a higher level of official planning kept mostly secret

from Harry and the other Cuban exile leaders, Bobby knew about the

flurry of eight drafts of the “Plan for a Coup in Cuba” that had been

completed in just the past five months. (Only three, much smaller

drafts had been completed in the six months before Almeida’s May

1963 contact with Harry.) Bobby also knew—from trusted advisors like

General Maxwell Taylor, General Joseph Carroll, and Army Secretary

Cyrus Vance—about the updated invasion plans for Cuba, CINCLANT

OPLANS 312 and 316, that might well have to be used if the coup didn’t

go smoothly.

Bobby’s exile leaders also had not been made aware of the Cuba

Contingency Planning for possible retaliation from Fidel if the Cuban

dictator found out about the coup plan. One of Bobby’s secretive sub-

committees of the National Security Council was still trying to finalize

the plans, but the thinking behind them had no doubt affected how

Bobby had dealt with the recent assassination attempts against JFK in

Chicago and Tampa. So far, Bobby and JFK’s media skills and political

savvy had kept any mention of the plots out of the press, and away from

leaking officials and Congress. After Friday’s motorcades in Dallas and

Austin, JFK would not take part in any more dangerous motorcades

until after the coup had taken place. Bobby could take comfort in the

fact that no active plot had been reported in Dallas, as there had been in

Chicago and Tampa, and that, compared with those cities, Dallas had

only a small Cuban population.

At a safe house in Washington, D.C., Harry Williams was eating a soli-

tary lunch of sandwiches as his CIA meeting took a break. Whether

Harry ate alone because of the lingering racism of D.C. and some in the

CIA—an attitude that forced Hispanic CIA assets to stay only at certain

hotels (the Ebbitt, for Harry and his associates)—or simply because of

the busy schedules of the CIA participants isn’t known.7 The morning

meeting had gone well, and no serious problems had arisen. Several

CIA officials had slipped in and out of the meeting, including Lyman

Kirkpatrick, the CIA’s Executive Director and technically its third-

highest official. Kirkpatrick had written a harsh report criticizing the

CIA’s performance during the Bay of Pigs debacle, so it made sense to

have him carefully review all aspects of the plan before Harry slipped

into Cuba for the coup. None of the men at the meeting were identified

to Harry by their real names, but a top Kennedy aide later confirmed

Kirkpatrick’s presence for part of the meeting.

Kirkpatrick had left the meeting to appear with McCone and Helms

before the President’s Foreign Intelligence Review Board at the White

House. (General Carroll had met with the Board the previous day.) Other

important officials at Harry’s meeting at various times have been iden-

tified as Richard Helms and Desmond FitzGerald. Present for most, if

not all, of the meeting was E. Howard Hunt, one of the two CIA officers

assigned to assist Harry. According to former FBI agent William Turner,

the other CIA officer assisting Harry was James McCord. (McCord

declined to speak to the authors or
Vanity Fair
about whether he was at

the meeting.)8 To Turner, Harry characterized McCord as cordial, profes-

sional, and helpful. But Harry said that E. Howard Hunt clearly resented

being in an essentially subordinate role to a Cuban exile.

In Harry’s morning meeting with the CIA officials, they had reviewed

the plan to have Harry meet with Commander Almeida inside Cuba,

then remain in place to await the coup. After Fidel had been killed, and

his death blamed on someone else (not Almeida or Harry), then Artime,