Legacy of Secrecy (50 page)

policeman associates: Blakey “was convinced that Sgt. Patrick Dean

had been the one that let Jack Ruby in the basement on the morning of

the 24th.”7 Dean refused to testify to Blakey’s Committee, and even told

author Peter Dale Scott “of his longtime relationship with [Joe] Civello,”

the mobster who ran Dallas for Carlos Marcello. Scott also notes that

Dean “was in charge of security in the Dallas basement when Oswald

was murdered,” and that Dean “later failed a lie detector test about

Ruby’s access to [the basement].” Dean also worked in narcotics, which

Ruby was also involved in with Civello and Marcello.8

If JFK’s assassination had occurred in Tampa, Ruby could have been

assisted by Trafficante associate Police Sgt. Jack de la Llana. If JFK had

been killed in Ruby’s hometown of Chicago, Ruby could have turned

to Trafficante and Rosselli associate Richard Cain, the chief investigator

for the Cook County sheriff.

Even as evidence tying Oswald to Cuba and Russia was causing con-

cern among officials in Washington, and would soon break in the press,

Marcello continued with the plans to kill Oswald. If the main goal of

JFK’s death had been to provoke the invasion of Cuba, keeping the

seemingly pro-Castro Oswald alive a while longer would have seemed

a more logical choice, so that he could be the focus of an outcry to retali-

ate against Fidel. But since the main goal of killing JFK was to end the

pressure on Marcello, Trafficante, and their associates, hence Oswald

had to die—and soon. With the authorities still seeking David Ferrie,

the whole plot could unravel and point to people working for Marcello,

unless Oswald was killed. Marcello could make only limited efforts to

contain Oswald’s public statements and cooperation with police, which

is why two attorneys linked to Marcello had been asked to represent

the still lawyerless Oswald. But only killing Oswald could guarantee

his silence.9

As had been planned the night before, at 10:19 AM (Central), dancer

Karen Carlin in Fort Worth called Ruby’s home, supposedly to ask him

to send her money. It’s doubtful that Ruby was there, since an earlier call

to Ruby’s home by his regular housekeeper was answered by someone

who didn’t seem to recognize her voice. At 10:45 AM, Ruby was talking

to a TV crew in front of the police station, before heading to the Western

Union office. At 11:00 AM, Sgt. Dean apparently removed police who

had been guarding an interior door to the basement. Upstairs, in Detec-

tive Fritz’s office, a small group of officials was questioning Oswald, but

at 11:15 AM they were told their time was up. However, the transfer car

wasn’t in position, so the group with Oswald had to slow its passage

toward the basement. The basement was packed with at least seventy

policemen and forty newsmen. At Western Union, Ruby wired Carlin

the money at 11:17 AM and then headed back to the police station, which

was only a block away. The timing was tight for Ruby to have any hope

of claiming a “sudden passion” defense, but he had plenty of associates

who could signal when he should arrive. For example, one minute after

Ruby left the Western Union office, his attorney entered the police station

and saw Oswald coming out of the jail elevator. Ruby’s attorney turned

to leave, telling a police detective, “That’s all I wanted to see.”

Even with the crowds of press and police, no one ever claimed to

have seen Ruby actually entering the police basement, which is one

more indication that he must have had help in doing so. Ruby most

likely entered the basement from the alley that runs between the Western

Union office and the police station. One officer claimed to have seen “an

unidentified white male” walk down the ramp into the basement, past

Officer Roy Vaughn, who was guarding the ramp. But that officer failed

a polygraph test, while Officer Vaughn, who consistently said he had not

let Ruby down the ramp, passed his polygraph test.10 Seven witnesses

agreed with Vaughn.

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Around 11:20 AM, Oswald walked through the door, flanked by two

Dallas police detectives. As soon as he was visible, a car horn blew, and

is audible on the news broadcast of the transfer. At 11:21, Ruby shot

Oswald and the basement erupted in pandemonium. As Oswald was

rushed to Parkland Hospital, the apprehended Ruby appeared to police

officer Don Ray Archer as “being extremely agitated and nervous, con-

tinually inquiring whether Oswald was dead or alive.” Oswald died at

1:07 PM, and it was only after Ruby was told that his victim had died

that “Ruby calmed down,” according to Marcello’s biographer, John H.

Davis. Davis notes that even after an officer told Ruby, “‘It looks like it’s

going to be the electric chair for you’ . . . Ruby immediately relaxed and

even managed a wan smile.” Officer Archer said “it seemed at that time

that Ruby felt his own life depended on the success of his mission, that

if Oswald had not died, he, Jack Ruby, would have been killed.”11

Later that day, a Secret Service agent interviewed a “highly agitated”

Karen Carlin. Carlin blurted out to the agent that “Oswald, Jack Ruby,

and other individuals unknown to her were involved in a plot to assas-

sinate Kennedy, and that she would be killed if she gave any information

to authorities.”12 As Officer Archer had suspected, the same was true

for Jack Ruby and members of his family. Ruby would soon be visited

in jail by Dallas restaurateur Joe Campisi, an underboss for Marcello;

Ruby had last seen Campisi at his restaurant on the night before JFK’s

murder. Campisi was also close to Sheriff Bill Decker, in whose cus-

tody Ruby would spend most of the rest of his life, reportedly in a cell

overlooking Dealey Plaza. When Ruby was later asked in a polygraph

examination if “members of your own family are now in danger because

of what you did,” Ruby said “yes.” Ruby’s sister later testified that Ruby

worried about their “brother Earl being dismembered [and] Earl’s chil-

dren [being] dismembered [and their] arms and legs . . . cut off.” At the

time, a Chicago mobster associate of Richard Cain was well known in

the underworld for that type of Mafia retribution; years later, Johnny

Rosselli’s legs were cut off after he was murdered.13

In South Carolina, Joseph Milteer had completed his phone call and

rejoined his friend William Somersett. After the radio broadcast the news

about Oswald’s death, Milteer told his friend, “That makes it work per-

fect . . . now we have no worry.”14

As Jack Ruby’s name surfaced and started to reverberate through the

back channels of law enforcement and intelligence, agencies ranging

from the FBI to the CIA had new information to withhold from the

public and from one another. Oswald’s death also had an immediate

and dramatic impact on the situation in Washington, since there would

now be no public trial. This spawned more investigations, some of them

secret, since the evidence gathered—and their final conclusions—would

not have to be presented in open court.

One of the by-products of Oswald’s death was the creation of what

would become known as the Warren Commission. Sometimes misper-

ceived as something solely created by LBJ so he could control the inves-

tigation, the Warren Commission was actually created because of the

efforts of several of Bobby Kennedy’s associates. Neither President

Johnson nor J. Edgar Hoover wanted the Warren Commission, whereas

Bobby’s associates apparently saw some type of commission as pre-

ferable to having the whole investigation in the hands of LBJ and

Hoover.

Within hours of Oswald’s death, Hoover was talking to Nicholas Kat-

zenbach, Bobby’s trusted deputy Attorney General. While Bobby was

consumed with funeral preparations and family matters, Katzenbach

was essentially running the Justice Department. However, Katzenbach

focused on areas like civil rights, and wasn’t a specialist in the areas of

organized crime or Hoffa, areas that were now especially relevant in

light of Ruby’s recent actions. Also, there is no evidence that Katzen-

bach was ever told about the JFK-Almeida coup plan, which had been

withheld from all of Bobby’s associates who weren’t actively involved

in the Cuba operation. Finally, it’s not clear if Katzenbach was acting at

Bobby’s direction in pursuing the creation of what became the Warren

Commission, or if he and other associates of Bobby were simply doing

what they assumed the Attorney General would want them to do.

Hoover’s memo of his conversation with Katzenbach on the after-

noon of November 24 says, “The thing I am concerned about, and so

is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the

public that Oswald is the real assassin.”15 In later years, much attention

was focused on the fact that Katzenbach seemed to be more interested

in convincing the public that Oswald acted alone than in finding out

if he was involved with others. Katzenbach stated his feelings even

more strongly in a memo the following day to LBJ aide Bill Moyers,

declaring, “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assas-

sin [and] that he did not have confederates who are still at large.” He

even wrote, “Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut

off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a

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Communist conspiracy or . . . a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the

Communists.” In his private memo to Moyers, even Katzenbach notes

that “the facts on Oswald seem [almost] too pat—too obvious (Marxist,

Cuba, Russian wife, etc.).” Yet Katzenbach’s main goal was “to head off

public speculation or Congressional hearings. . . . ”16

However, as reflected in Hoover’s notes of his November 24 talk with

Katzenbach, they disagreed about the best way to achieve that goal. Kat-

zenbach “thinks that the President might appoint a Presidential Com-

mission of three outstanding citizens to make a determination.” Hoover

“countered with a suggestion that we make an investigative report to the

Attorney General . . . then the Attorney General can make the report to

the President, and the President can decide whether to make it public.”

Hoover points out that to do otherwise could “complicate our foreign

relations [because], for instance, Oswald made a phone call to the Cuban

Embassy in Mexico City which we intercepted.”17

We feel the evidence shows the latter concern is at the heart of Katzen-

bach’s desire to convince the public Oswald acted alone, and to cut off

speculation about anyone else who might have been involved. In that,

Katzenbach shared the concerns of Hoover, LBJ, McCone, and other top

officials as well, from Bobby to Rusk to General Maxwell Taylor. The

only differences are that Katzenbach expressed his feelings in writing

and was the least informed of the top officials just listed, all of whom

had additional reasons to avoid any intensive investigation of Oswald’s

(and now Ruby’s) associates.

As the struggle between Katzenbach’s “pro-Commission” forces and

Hoover and LBJ’s “anti-Commission” forces played out in the com-

ing days, Hoover was busy keeping a lid on connections to Ruby and

Oswald that could embarrass the FBI. Ruby had been an official FBI

informant in 1959, as part of an unusual sequence of events that coin-

cided with Ruby’s well-documented trips to Havana while Trafficante

was under house arrest there. As we mentioned earlier, and documented

at length in
Ultimate Sacrifice,
Ruby was running guns and other arma-

ments to Cuba at the time with associates of Trafficante and Hoffa, and

Ruby was probably one of the people using the alias “Jack La Rue,” the

mysterious man whom Bobby Kennedy’s investigators were unable to

find. At the time, Ruby was also acting as an intermediary for Marcello,

in efforts to get Santo Trafficante released from house arrest in Cuba.

Just two days after Oswald’s death, the FBI and the CIA learned that

“a British journalist . . . John Wilson . . . gave information to the American

embassy in London that [in 1959] an American gangster named Santos . . .

was visited frequently by an American gangster type named Ruby.”18

Wilson was a reliable witness who had testified before the US Senate

in 1959 about a young Salvador Allende (later president of Chile), and

Congressional investigators would eventually turn up information cor-

roborating his account. However, in late 1963 and 1964, the FBI and CIA

did not want this information to be made public, so their main emphasis

was in trying to discredit Wilson.

In Dallas, just a few hours after Oswald’s death, FBI Agent Hosty

was ordered to destroy the note Oswald had left for him a couple of

weeks earlier. He flushed it down a toilet, and its existence wouldn’t

become known until 1975.19 Hosty’s name was also excluded from the