Legacy of Secrecy (64 page)

the allegations that the assassination of President Kennedy was caused

by a domestic or foreign conspiracy.”20 From a strictly legal standpoint,

Bobby’s statement was true, since he lacked hard evidence of the con-

spiracy involving the Mafia, Hoffa, and Cuban exiles, even though he

strongly suspected them.

The Warren Commission investigation was essentially over by early

June 1964. The original deadline for the staff to finish their reports was

June 30, but after they complained, an angry Warren finally agreed to

extend it to July 15. In the meantime, Bobby finally learned about CIA

reports of the March 1964 Mafia plot to assassinate Fidel, and wanted

an investigation, but his request went nowhere.21

Bobby was also focused on his political future. After deft political

moves by LBJ ensured that the Democratic convention would not draft

Bobby for vice president, Bobby decided to run for the Senate from

his adopted home of New York. Two unusual things involving assas-

sinations happened during Bobby’s successful Senate run in the fall

of 1964: ABC-TV journalist Lisa Howard, originally the spark for the

peace attempts with Fidel Castro, turned against Bobby after learning

he had been part of efforts to assassinate Fidel. In addition, Puerto Rican

Teamster thug Frank Chavez made plans to kill Bobby, but Jimmy Hoffa

apparently talked him out of it—for the time being. Three years later,

Chavez would again try to assassinate Bobby.

Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, and Santo Trafficante saw their power

and wealth continued to grow in 1964. Marcello was no doubt glad when

Guy Banister died (of natural causes) in June 1964, even as the Warren

Commission was trying to wrap up its work. Marcello hated blacks

and civil rights, but when three young activists in Mississippi—James

Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—were killed by

Klansmen in June 1964, J. Edgar Hoover reportedly had to turn to Mafi-

oso Gregory Scarpa Sr. of the Columbo crime family to pressure one of

the locals to reveal the location of the bodies.22 Scarpa would have to get

Marcello’s permission to operate even briefly in Mississippi, but such

assistance could only help Marcello maintain his good relationship with

the local FBI.

Johnny Rosselli continued to be very successful in Las Vegas, espe-

cially since the massive crackdown Bobby had announced back in

November 1963 had fizzled. Rosselli’s status in Hollywood continued

to increase, and he became a member of the prestigious Friars Club, an

honor that would lead to major problems for him three years later.

Santo Trafficante likewise prospered, as did his part of the French

Connection heroin pipeline. His henchman Herminio Diaz concentrated

on his criminal and drug activity with Trafficante and wouldn’t become

involved in more plots against Castro until the following year. Traffi-

cante’s ties to exiles continued to pay off in intelligence, and in the sum-

mer of 1964 an exile FBI informant linked to members of Trafficante’s

organization once more got wind of the CIA’s contacts with Rolando

Cubela (AMLASH). Because the FBI didn’t share this information with

the CIA or the White House, the CIA remained unaware of how insecure

its ongoing operation was.23

As Richard Helms continued to have Desmond FitzGerald meld parts

of AMWORLD, AMLASH, and AMTRUNK together, both men were

unaware of an even more serious breach of security that would help

to doom their efforts. In September 1964, one of Fidel Castro’s agents

managed to infiltrate the security arm of Artime’s organization. Unfor-

tunately, Helms and FitzGerald were just beginning a major new push

to topple Castro, but from that time forward, Fidel knew much of what

Artime and the CIA were up to.24

Unaware of Castro’s spy in Artime’s group, Helms had FitzGerald

forge ahead with their 1964 plots to topple Fidel. The very conserva-

tive Manuel Artime, and the liberal exile leaders Manolo Ray and Eloy

Menoyo, found working together increasingly difficult. CIA files are full

of their backbiting, insults, and complaints about one another. However,

Ray and Menoyo were apparently willing to continue working with

Artime because he got the lion’s share of the CIA’s funding and support.

Artime worked with Ray because Ray had the connection to Rolando

Cubela, an important fact left out of files that the CIA later provided

to Congress. Without Almeida, Cubela appeared to be the only Cuban

official willing to actively plot Fidel’s elimination. The goal of Helms

and FitzGerald (or of their subordinates E. Howard Hunt and David

Atlee Phillips) seems to have been to get Artime and Cubela to meet

face-to-face.

In late August 1964, two Cuban officials much higher than Cubela

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

made it known to Artime’s associates that they were willing to help

with a coup in a limited capacity. In stark contrast to the risks Almeida

had been willing to take the previous year, these two officials said they

would “not conspire inside” Cuba because they were “afraid.” Artime’s

case officer noted disdainfully that the two officials were willing only

to “give information,” and would “not try to assassinate [Fidel] them-

selves, because they are yellow.”25

Even worse, the two officials had contacted an Artime associate who

also worked with Santo Trafficante. Artime’s case officer pointed out the

Artime/Trafficante associate was “a walking security violation . . . he

has already talked to too many people about his situation.” However,

to have any chance of succeeding, Cubela would need the help of other

Cuban officials, so their names were kept in the mix. Also active in purs-

ing this new avenue was Artime’s second in command, Rafael “Chi Chi”

Quintero, who was also in touch with Cubela.26

The CIA received sporadic reports of attempts or plots to kill Fidel in

the fall of 1964. A plan involving Cubela, a Trafficante associate, and a

Belgian rifle “equipped with a silencer” was called off. The Cuban who

had been pushing for two years to have the CIA assassinate Fidel in the

kitchen of his favorite restaurant (by hiding an assassin in the pantry)

was finally arrested. One report described another attempt to assassinate

Fidel, in which “one of his bodyguards was killed.”27 Even so, the CIA

and exile plotting was still too unfocused to be effective.28

While Helms struggled to do something about Cuba, he was still fending

off requests from the Warren Commission, which was trying to wrap up

its work. The Commissioners had long missed their original deadline,

but now LBJ was pressuring them to issue their final report well before

election day. President Johnson faced the conservative Barry Goldwater,

and while LBJ seemed to have a comfortable lead in the polls, he wanted

to be sure that any doubts about JFK’s assassination couldn’t be used

against him.

On September 15, Helms asked his deputy to write to Commission

Counsel J. Lee Rankin, responding to a March 12 request for any infor-

mation the CIA had about Jack Ruby. Helms himself had replied on

June 8, saying the CIA had no information on Ruby. Given all of the

reports about Ruby’s trips to Cuba and his gunrunning, Rankin and his

staff were appropriately skeptical and asked again, but Helms’s deputy

claimed the CIA had absolutely nothing on Ruby.29

Three days later, Helms himself admitted to Rankin that the CIA

had received State Department documents about Oswald going back to

November 1959, even though Helms had claimed earlier that the CIA had

not opened its file on Oswald until 1960. But it was too late for Rankin

to press Helms about the discrepancy, so Rankin let the matter drop.30

Helms still had not resolved the Nosenko situation, which left some

of the Warren Commission members suspicious about possible Soviet

involvement in JFK’s murder. On September 7, 1964, Richard Russell,

Sherman Cooper, and Hale Boggs went to Dallas to interview Marina

Oswald again. Congressional investigators wrote that she “changed her

story and altered testimony,” which probably only added to the three

Commission members’ concern.31

Meanwhile, Warren Commission staffers and the FBI were under

pressure to resolve the matter of Silvia Odio’s visit from Oswald and

two exiles a couple of months prior to JFK’s murder. On September 16,

the FBI apparently got a break. An anti-Castro soldier of fortune alleg-

edly told “the FBI that he” and two friends “were the people who visited

Sylvia Odio.” The soldier of fortune knew Santo Trafficante and had

been under house arrest with the mob boss in Cuba in 1959, before being

asked to join the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro in the spring of 1963. The

man’s admission came just in time for the Warren Commission’s last

meeting, two days later.32

At that final meeting, three of the Commission members, led by

Georgia senator Richard Russell, tried to include a dissenting opinion

about the magic bullet theory. However, his effort failed, and the report

was issued with no dissent. Over the next two days, the soldier of for-

tune changed his story and denied having visited Odio, as did his two

friends, but it was too late to change the Commission’s Final Report. 33

The Report was submitted to President Johnson on September 24, given

to Hoover the following day, and released to the public on September

28, 1964. The press widely proclaimed the Warren Report, as it came

to be known, to be the definitive account of Oswald’s guilt as a lone

assassin.34

In later years, four of the Commissioners (Russell, Boggs, Cooper,

and McCloy) privately expressed doubts about the Report’s conclusion.

According to
Vanity Fair
, Richard Russell said he was “not completely

satisfied in my own mind that he (Oswald) did plan and commit this

act altogether on his own.” Even though Louisiana congressman Boggs

had his “political campaigns . . . heavily financed by Carlos Marcello,”

according to the head of the New Orleans Crime Commission, Boggs

was one of the Commission’s most skeptical members.35

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Gerald Ford had expressed doubts privately to his fellow Commis-

sioners, and he insisted on precise wording in the Report, saying the

Commission had “found no evidence” of a conspiracy. But in public, Ford

became the most vocal Commissioner proclaiming its accuracy. Ford

wrote an article for
Life
magazine touting the report before its release,

and declared “the monumental record of the President’s Commission

will stand like a Gibraltar of factual literature through the ages to come.”

He also wrote a book about the Commission,
Portrait of an Assassin
, that

presented Oswald as a lone nut. Ford’s public stance would impact his

political career after he became president in 1974 (and ran for the office

in 1976), since the release of any information that would undermine the

Report’s “lone assassin” conclusion would reflect badly on his judg-

ment. In addition, Ford would later be less than truthful when testifying

to Congress that he hadn’t used classified files in writing his book about

the Commission.36

Publicly, President Johnson embraced the Report’s “lone assassin”

conclusion, but “Johnson never believed that one person could have

accomplished JFK’s assassination,” according to Joseph Califano, who

left his position with Cyrus Vance to became one of LBJ’s trusted aides.

However, within three years, LBJ would broaden his suspicion, telling

another aide that there was a “plot in connection with the assassination

[and] the President felt that [the] CIA had something to do with this

plot.”37

Bobby Kennedy supported the Warren Report in his few, brief public

comments on the subject, when students asked him about it during his

1964 Senate campaign. However, his friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said

that in private, “Robert Kennedy had very serious reservations about the

Warren Commission Report.”38 These reservations would only deepen

in the months that followed, leading Bobby to initiate his own investiga-

tions into his brother’s death.

Chapter Twenty-three

The American press’s overwhelming support for the Warren Report in

the fall of 1964 has been well documented. But far less known are the

roles played by Richard Helms and E. Howard Hunt in shaping the

media’s coverage of the Warren Report, both in 1964 and in years to

come. Even as Helms and Hunt continued their anti-Castro operations,

their roles in dealing with the press and publishers have received sur-

prisingly little attention over the years.

The mainstream press had several reasons to uncritically accept the

Warren Report’s conclusions, ranging from the distinguished nature of

the Commission itself to the lack of counter-information easily available

to the press in America. In those pre-Watergate days, the press often