Legacy of Secrecy (24 page)

would later cofound the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers with

Phillips. Rosselli described Ruby as “one of our boys” to investigative

journalist Jack Anderson. It’s likely that the Ruby-Rosselli meeting was

ostensibly about the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro, but a later

admission by Rosselli makes it clear that the meeting had an even more

sinister purpose.15

Johnny Rosselli’s exact location during JFK’s Dallas motorcade cannot

be definitively established, because the FBI was unable to locate Ros-

selli between November 19 and November 27, 1963. However, we know

what Rosselli was up to, because he told his attorney, Tom Wadden, that

he was involved in JFK’s assassination. According to noted historian

Richard D. Mahoney, the first John F. Kennedy scholar at the Kennedy

Presidential Library, Wadden revealed Rosselli’s confession to one of

Bobby’s former Mafia prosecutors, William Hundley.16 Roselli’s admis-

sion finally confirms what the Mafia don had hinted at to Jack Anderson

over the years, and what a top Kennedy aide told us in 1992.

We noted earlier the account of a pilot associate of John Martino, who

says he flew Rosselli from Tampa to New Orleans on November 21,

then to Houston, and finally to Dallas on the morning of November 22.

Three other unconfirmed reports place Rosselli in Dallas on November

22, most with Chicago hit man Charles Nicoletti. Newspaper accounts

confirm that Nicoletti, who was also involved in narcotics smuggling,

had joined the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro in October 1963. Nicoletti

was best known in law enforcement circles for having a “hit car,” with

hidden compartments to hold weapons.17 (Rosselli’s biographers cite

“an unconfirmed account [that] a woman drove ‘Johnny Roselli and

a second man, a sharpshooter from Miami, to the grassy knoll at the

far end of Dealey Plaza,’” but none of these reports achieve the level

of documented reliability we strive for.)18 Perhaps when the remaining

one million CIA records related to JFK’s assassination are released, and

the FBI finds and releases its missing Rosselli-surveillance files, we will

be able to determine with certainty Rosselli’s whereabouts at the time

of JFK’s death.

By the morning of November 22, 1963, Tampa godfather Santo Traf-

ficante had no doubt already planned a celebratory dinner for that

evening, to toast JFK’s murder with Frank Ragano, the lawyer whose

services he shared with Jimmy Hoffa. Trafficante’s triumph would be all

the sweeter because the dinner would be held at the posh International

Inn, the site of one of the speeches JFK made in Tampa on November

18, 1963. According to Ragano, it was “the ritziest hotel and restau-

rant in Tampa,” a place for special occasions, and Trafficante would no

doubt delight in walking through the same “hotel lobby [where JFK] had

shaken hands and waved at admirers” just four days earlier.19

Based on testimony from FBI informant Jose Aleman, by November

22, Trafficante had been planning JFK’s assassination for over a year,

so it’s only natural that he would have wanted to celebrate the culmi-

nation of his long months of planning.20 Ragano says that Trafficante

confirmed his role in JFK’s death to him, though, as we document later,

the lawyer’s account of Trafficante’s confession downplays Ragano’s

own participation.

Normally extremely reclusive, Trafficante tried to stay out of the lime-

light. An average-looking man, he cultivated a nondescript image, and

since he was not widely recognized or a media figure in Tampa, he knew

he could celebrate at the exclusive restaurant without attracting undue

attention. Also, Trafficante’s inside man on the Tampa police force, Sgt.

Jack de la Llana, could let him know if any suspicion started to come

Trafficante’s way.

We’ve noted accounts from a captured Cuban exile that Trafficante

drug associates, like Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz, were in Dallas

on November 22 and were part of JFK’s assassination. Cuban officials

described Diaz as a “mulatto” or “dark-skinned,” and claimed he was

in the Texas School Book Depository as JFK’s motorcade approached.21

Another longtime Trafficante associate, a full-time CIA employee at the

time, would be seen near the “grassy knoll” just down the street from

the Book Depository as JFK’s motorcade passed.

On November 22, 1963, John Martino, Trafficante’s electronics whiz,

was at home in Miami. He had earlier told his wife, “They’re going to

kill him [JFK]. They’re going to kill him when he gets to Texas.”22 As

Vanity Fair
reported, Martino made it clear that in Dallas there were

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

“two guns, two people involved,” and that some of those involved in

the plot were “anti-Castro Cubans.” Martino told both
Newsday
reporter

John Cummings and his business partner that “Oswald wasn’t” one of

the shooters.23

In fact, one of the Cuban exiles involved had visited the Martino

household just two months earlier, accompanied by a “man from Wash-

ington, tall and large . . . in a dark suit, like from the State Department.”

However, the man with the exile wasn’t from State, since they didn’t

deal with Martino—but the CIA did. Several weeks before JFK’s trip to

Dallas, Martino says he was introduced to Oswald in Miami; in August

Martino had seen Oswald passing out leaflets in New Orleans but had

not met him.24

According to
Vanity Fair,
on November 22 Martino had “asked his

son, Edward, to stay home from school that Friday. No reason given and

no explanation offered. During the morning, Martino asked Edward . . .

to watch television and notify him immediately of any special news or

bulletins.”25

Trafficante’s heroin partner, Michel Victor Mertz, was in Dallas at the

time of JFK’s visit, according to one of the only memos the CIA has

released about Mertz. It says that “on the morning of 22 November,”

Mertz “was in Fort Worth” at the same time as JFK; then Mertz “was in

Dallas in the afternoon” later that same day.26 While recently in Louisiana

and Texas, Mertz had been using the name of “Jean Souetre,” his old

associate who was now a fugitive because of the 1962 attempt to shoot

French president Charles de Gaulle in his limousine. The real Souetre

was in Europe at the time, but Mertz’s deception was sure to create con-

sternation at—and cover-ups by—the CIA and FBI after the JFK hit. But

Mertz frequently used aliases and cover identities in his work, and he

would switch to another one after JFK’s assassination. Doing so would

ensure not only that he would be able to leave Dallas after JFK’s murder,

but also that he would be escorted to safety by the U.S. government.

As Marcello sat in the New Orleans courtroom, his men were in posi-

tion and all of them knew their roles. Each was doing the same type of

thing he had done successfully before. Only a dozen people appear to

have had knowing roles in JFK’s assassination and as with Marcello’s

heroin network, portions of the operation were compartmentalized,

with people being told only what they needed to know. Now, every-

thing was finally ready.

Chapter Nine

The activities of Oswald and others at the Texas School Book Deposi-

tory have been the subject of tremendous debate for decades. As we’ll

document, witnesses who tended to support the initial lone-assassin

conclusion were encouraged, and their stories often evolved over time

to bolster it even more. Witnesses whose observations didn’t support

a lone-assassin conclusion were sometimes ignored, pressed to change

their testimony, or threatened, or their remarks were altered in offi-

cial reports. Entire books have been written about the hours surround-

ing JFK’s murder, so the following is not intended as a complete list of

accounts. But we have tried to exclude information that has been dis-

credited, and to include details from early witnesses that some official

reports often downplayed or ignored. This information tends to form

a coherent scenario that helps to explain why Bobby Kennedy, Richard

Helms, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover took the actions they did

after JFK’s death.

The official version of events adopted quickly after JFK’s murder says

that Oswald—having decided to kill JFK—went to visit his wife Thurs-

day night, November 21. The next morning, Oswald carried a large,

suspicious package that contained his mail order rifle as he rode to work

with a neighbor, who was also a coworker. Then, at lunchtime, Oswald

was supposedly alone on the sixth floor of the warehouselike building,

where he carefully arranged a “sniper’s nest” of book boxes and waited

to kill JFK for still-unknown reasons. Then, after having a perfectly clear

shot as JFK’s motorcade approached, with JFK looming ever larger in his

sights, Oswald didn’t fire. Even as JFK’s motorcade slowed to a crawl to

make a hard left turn below his window—when it would have been like

shooting fish in a barrel—Oswald still didn’t fire. Only as JFK’s motor-

cade picked up speed, traveling away from the building and becoming

partially obscured by trees on the hill leading up to the “grassy knoll,”

did Oswald supposedly start to fire. In approximately six seconds, this

man, who was a poor shot when he left the Marines and who had no

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

recent practice, completed a shooting feat scarcely matched—or, as some

experts say, never matched—by the world’s top sharpshooters.1

This story, which became the official version within less than twenty-

four hours after JFK’s death, has been shown to be problematic for many

years, because of overlooked or ignored information in the govern-

ment’s own reports. As noted earlier, the man who drove Oswald to

work (and his sister) said Oswald’s wrapped package was too long for

a disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, based on the way Oswald

held it cupped in his hand and under his armpit. Oswald had ordered

the old, unreliable weapon through the mail months earlier, using an

alias, even though more reliable weapons at the same price were easily

available in Dallas (with no ID required), and would have left no paper

trail linking him to the weapon. When FBI officials later tried to test-fire

the rifle, they found the scope so misaligned that it had to be redrilled

and remounted before it could be fired with any accuracy—a fact that

made Oswald’s supposed marksmanship all the more remarkable (some

would say impossible). The rifle also tended to jam frequently; when

later a Discovery Channel show had a marksman test-fire a Mannlicher

that one of the country’s top gunsmiths had reconditioned (a service

Oswald’s rifle was never accorded), it still jammed a quarter of the time.2

These are just a few of the many problems with the official scenario that

experts have uncovered over the years, which raise new questions about

what really happened that day at 12:30 PM (Central) when shots rang

out in Dealey Plaza.

Carolyn Arnold was the “secretary to the vice president of the Book

Depository,” and on November 22, at 12:15 PM, she clearly saw Lee Har-

vey Oswald in “the lunchroom on the second floor.” Oswald sometimes

went up to the second-floor lunchroom to use the soft-drink vending

machine, since there were none on the first floor. Arnold told investiga-

tive journalist Anthony Summers that Oswald “was alone as usual and

appeared to be having lunch.”3 Another Depository employee would

tell the Dallas police that “during the lunch breaks, Oswald usually

made several phone calls, which were usually short in length.”4 Whom

did he call? Aside from Marina, the FBI–Warren Commission’s version

of Oswald says he had no friends he would have called in Dallas, or

anywhere else, for that matter. It’s clear from their later testimony that

Oswald was not calling his mother or brothers. It’s conceivable that

Oswald’s “several phone calls” were brief, perhaps coded, messages

regarding his intelligence work.

Just twenty-five minutes before Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald in the

second-floor lunchroom, his supervisor had seen Oswald “near the tele-

phone on the first floor.” It’s possible that Oswald made or received calls

that day that would have required him to be away from other employees

as Kennedy’s motorcade neared Dealey Plaza. Meanwhile, on the sixth

floor, Book Depository employee Bonnie Rae Williams ate his lunch on

the sixth floor “at least until 12:15 PM, perhaps till 12:20 PM.” When he

left, he didn’t see anyone else on the sixth floor.5

Arnold Rowland stood in Dealey Plaza with his wife, awaiting the

arrival of the President’s motorcade. Within minutes of Bonnie Rae Wil-

liams’ leaving the sixth floor, Rowland looked up at the Book Depository

to see a “man back from the window—he was standing and holding a

rifle,” a high-powered weapon with a scope. Rowland pointed out the