Legacy of Secrecy (71 page)

another, even more immediate problem. Rosselli’s power flowed largely

from Sam Giancana, but that too was at risk. Giancana had been in

prison for almost a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury under

grant of immunity. The grand jury’s term was almost up, but the govern-

ment could empanel a new one and keep Giancana in prison for another

year. Control of the Chicago Mafia had already slipped from Giancana’s

grasp, though he was still a figure to be reckoned with—but another year

could end even that, and greatly weaken Rosselli’s clout.

For years, the decision to release Sam Giancana in May 1966 has

been attributed to Bobby’s successors at the Justice Department, but

Congressional investigators found that the CIA actually played a part

in Giancana’s release. Richard Helms wanted to keep Giancana’s role

in the CIA-Mafia plots secret, but someone must have suggested that

might not happen if Giancana faced another year in prison. Based on

the timing, that someone was very likely Rosselli.7

Rosselli finally got some good news when Sam Giancana was quietly

released on May 30, 1966. However, the event created a political firestorm

in the press. Giancana, worried that the government might change its

mind, fled to Mexico, where he was joined by longtime associate Rich-

ard Cain.8 That left Rosselli to face his immigration problem without

help from his formerly powerful patron. According to an FBI report, by

June 1966, Rosselli “looked sick and worried and recently has not had

his usual dapper appearance,” despite the fact that the FBI observed a

“very attractive blonde woman . . . staying at Rosselli’s apartment” and

“cooking his meals.” Rosselli knew he needed a big score, a strong new

patron, and a way to deal with his immigration problems—and soon.9

The roots of Rosselli’s solution came from one of Hoffa’s attempts to

overturn his convictions. Hoffa felt that Bobby Kennedy had used ille-

gal wiretaps against him. At that time, laws didn’t allow wiretap evi-

dence to be used in court—only phone records (demonstrating that a

call was made to a certain number on a particular date) were admissible.

Hoover’s FBI utilized illegal and legal phone taps extensively, but the

transcripts of even the legal taps, and the evidence gleaned from them,

couldn’t be used in court. If Hoffa could prove that his conviction was

based on such evidence, he would go free.10

Hoffa had encouraged Missouri Senator Edward Long, one of his

biggest supporters in Congress, to hold hearings on Justice Department

phone taps, particularly those authorized by Bobby Kennedy. LBJ aide

Bill Moyers told Richard Goodwin, Bobby’s friend and now LBJ’s top

speech writer, that Long was “out to get Bobby” on behalf of Hoffa, and

that LBJ was “egging him on” to get back at his political rival. Though

Bobby still spoke approvingly of LBJ in public, several months earlier,

Bobby had started to talk about the need for peace negotiations with

Vietnam, and LBJ believed that his hated adversary was betraying him

yet again.11

One of the witnesses that Senator Long’s committee called was Robert

Maheu, who had been involved in the bugging incident that first tipped

off the FBI about the CIA-Mafia plots. At that point, Senator Long and

the rest of Congress knew only about the bugging incident, not about the

plots. Because of Maheu’s increasing amounts of work for the reclusive

Howard Hughes, he wanted to avoid doing anything that could dam-

age that relationship. According to Rosselli’s biographers, Maheu “con-

tacted the CIA general counsel” about the matter. Richard Helms didn’t

want Congress finding out about the CIA-Mafia plots or the CIA’s own

illegal domestic surveillance, so the CIA’s general counsel “persuaded

Long to drop his demand that Maheu testify.”

While it satisfied Maheu and Helms in the short term, this incident

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would have several important ramifications in the long run. Rosselli

would see yet again how the threat of exposing the CIA-Mafia plots

could be used to blackmail the CIA. Also, because Maheu retained his

powerful position with Howard Hughes, Rosselli could use his relation-

ship with Maheu to get to Hughes.

It’s ironic that Senator Long’s counsel for his Hoffa-inspired hearings

was attorney Bernard Fensterwald. Apparently intrigued by what he

heard from the CIA and observed while working for Long, Fensterwald

would soon begin a quest to learn more. He would become one of the

most important JFK assassination researchers, an attorney for figures

like James McCord and James Earl Ray, and a leading Freedom of Infor-

mation Act attorney who tried to pry crucial JFK files from reluctant

agencies.

When Senator Long’s hearings failed to produce the dramatic revela-

tions that Jimmy Hoffa needed, the Teamster president turned to Carlos

Marcello and Santo Trafficante for help. Though Trafficante was closer

in some ways to Hoffa because they shared attorney Frank Ragano,

Marcello had more power nationally. Later investigations showed that

Marcello spent many of his days in his office at the Town and Country

Motel, receiving requests from mob bosses, businessmen, and politicians

who wanted his help. While most of those seeking his favor were from

Louisiana and the surrounding states, some were from other regions

of the country. As long as the deal was profitable and Marcello got his

cut, he was happy to use his clout, muscle, and financial power to help

himself by helping them.

Marcello and Trafficante would have also been very concerned about

Rosselli’s legal troubles and the loss of their old ally Giancana. Rosselli’s

influence in Las Vegas was still useful to the mob bosses, since their Mafia

associates controlled most of the city’s major casinos. Besides, after the

Joe Valachi fiasco, they knew it was far better for Rosselli to remain free

than to wind up in prison, where an aging Mafia don might say anything

not to die. In addition, Rosselli’s possible deportation would have had

special resonance for Marcello, who potentially faced the same fate. The

problems of Hoffa and Rosselli demanded that Marcello and Trafficante

come up with an effective course of action.

FBI reports say that in June 1966, Carlos Marcello “visited Santo Traf-

ficante at his Tampa, Florida home . . . [and] during this period Carlos

Marcello and Trafficante had several lengthy private conversations.”

These talks had to be away from family and their usual associates, so

the FBI notes that “Marcello and Trafficante sat alone in the backyard

[of] Trafficante’s home” for hours.12

Marcello and Trafficante had plotted and planned JFK’s assassination

for more than a year, but they didn’t have that much time now. Just weeks

after the two men strategized in Tampa, the FBI says, “over the July 4

weekend, Santo Trafficante . . . visited Carlos Marcello at his Churchill

Farms Estate.” At the same place where Marcello and Ferrie had plotted

JFK’s murder, “several lengthy private conversations occurred [while]

Marcello and Trafficante walked out into the middle of the fields behind

the main house and sat for many hours.” The Mafia chiefs wanted to

be sure there was absolutely no chance that their conversations were

bugged. The plans they developed to aid Rosselli and Hoffa would

unfold over the next several months and into early 1967.13

Richard Helms and Bobby Kennedy shared some of the same concerns

about Long’s hearings and Giancana’s release, though each man was

grappling with his own worries as well. Richard Helms had been forced

to deal with the issue of the CIA-Mafia plots twice in only a month, and

on June 24, 1966, a “summary of the operation [was] prepared by the

[CIA’s] Office of Security.” The more people who knew even vaguely

about the plots, either inside the CIA or out, the greater the chance the

plans would leak, unraveling the cover-up Helms had managed so care-

fully on his climb to the CIA’s highest post. Helms knew he would have

to deal with the Rosselli matter at some point, but it wasn’t as pressing as

the Giancana and Maheu situations had been. In Rosselli’s case, Helms

would prove reluctant to play the same card a third time.14

Bobby Kennedy must have had mixed feelings about Sam Giancana’s

release. On one hand, a year in jail was a small price to pay for whatever

role he’d played in JFK’s murder. On the other hand, few high-level

mobsters were ever imprisoned for any length of time, and almost never

for a hit. Bobby also knew from his contacts in the Justice Department

that Mafia prosecutions had fallen to less than half the number he had

overseen in 1963. Finally, like Helms, Bobby didn’t want the CIA-Mafia

plots coming out. He was already struggling to not be tainted by Sena-

tor Long’s surveillance investigation, and another scandal could end

his political career. As Bobby would soon confide to trusted associates,

becoming president was the only way he would really be able to find

his brother’s killers and bring them to justice.

Bobby faced other issues that, for him, were supplanting mob pros-

ecutions. Though he had been an undistinguished freshman senator

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so far, his trip to South Africa in June 1966 seemed to reinvigorate him,

and perhaps made him even more sensitive to the plight of minorities

and the poor in the US.15 He also saw with alarm what was happen-

ing in America in the summer of 1966: James Meredith, the first black

student at the University of Mississippi, was shot in the back during

a demonstration. Race riots broke out in Chicago and Atlanta. Martin

Luther King denounced the “Black Power” advocates who had egged

on the Atlanta rioters, only to be attacked by whites during a peaceful

demonstration just outside of Chicago.16 President Johnson’s attention

was increasingly consumed by Vietnam, so if LBJ’s dream of a “Great

Society” was to be fulfilled, some other leader would have to work with

Dr. King and others to make it a reality.

Bobby now paid little attention to Cuba; LBJ also wanted to avoid

bringing it back into the headlines before the 1966 Congressional elec-

tions. A 1966 FBI memo again raised the possibility that Soviet missiles

were still in Cuba, something no president could prove wasn’t true. In

the wake of Cubela’s imprisonment, any serious coup plans seemed out

of the question. One of the Cuban officials who had approached the CIA

in the summer of 1964 had been stripped of his rank and position, but

at least he wasn’t imprisoned like Cubela or Menoyo. By 1966, the CIA

had no way of telling whether any of the disgruntled Cuban officials

were safe to deal with.17

As a result, Richard Helms would have to keep the pot boiling with

actions that stood little chance of blowing up in his face—and little

chance of really changing things in Cuba. Operations to kill Castro and

make small raids continued, but they were fewer and had to be more

“deniable,” looking as if they were staged only by exiles, not backed by

the US. Unlike the CIA’s usual covert efforts to acquire intelligence about

Cuba, these operations had to be conducted under much deeper cover.

As noted earlier, David Atlee Phillips apparently continued using his

“Maurice Bishop” cover identity to deal occasionally with Alpha 66’s

Antonio Veciana, probably on trips to the US from his post as CIA Station

Chief in the Dominican Republic. Congressional investigators found

that Veciana was of interest to the DIA’s Army Intelligence in 1966, so

military intelligence may have been used as a cutout to hide Phillips’s

and the CIA’s real role with Veciana.18

Various incidents made the news in Cuba, but received little coverage

in the US: a supposed “CIA agent” captured in Cuba on June 1, 1966; a

September bombing, by plane, of an electric plant being constructed in

Cuba; and an American pilot reported as being “shot down and captured

after dropping weapons and espionage equipment” into Cuba. It was

hard to tell which were CIA operations and which were done solely by

exiles—and that was the point, the way Helms knew it had to be from

then onward.19

Most of the more established Cuban exile leaders were gradually

being phased out in favor of a new, more violent generation. Even

though Artime was involved in scandals, the CIA still paid him $5,000

per month until June 1966, when his payments dropped to $3,000 each

month. There was talk in Miami’s Little Havana that Harry Williams

might come back to replace Artime, but it was only a rumor—Harry was

devoting himself to his family and business. As for Artime, he agreed

to officially terminate his relationship with the CIA at the end of 1966.

Artime would pursue business interests, traveling widely in Central

America and the Caribbean, while he continued to sell off some of the