Legacy of Secrecy (80 page)

ruary 3, 1967, the day the second Milteer article appeared. According

to Frank Ragano, the godfather was arrested for vagrancy when he

stepped off the plane at the Miami airport, even though he was “wear-

ing an $800 silk Brioni suit and . . . had $1,000 in cash in his pockets and

was on his way to his home in Miami.”11 Ragano paid Trafficante’s bail

within hours, and chalked up the arrest to harassment by the Dade

County sheriff’s office. However, the timing of Trafficante’s arrest is

interesting, and apparently, some officials were starting to suspect that

Trafficante had had a role in JFK’s death. The following month, Frank

Ragano would write a letter to J. Edgar Hoover, saying that “some of

the allegations involving Trafficante have been ridiculous.” Author Dick

Russell describes the rest of the letter as trying “to deflect any suspicion

of Trafficante’s involvement in the [JFK] assassination.” Whose “suspi-

cion” that was is not clear, since the press would not link Trafficante to

JFK’s assassination until well into the next decade.12

Three weeks before Trafficante visited Marcello, Trafficante had been

in touch with Johnny Rosselli. Rosselli and Trafficante almost certainly

discussed what Rosselli did next: revealing the CIA-Mafia plots, and

the “turned-around assassins” cover story, to America’s best-known

investigative journalist, Drew Pearson.13

Drew Pearson wasn’t just America’s most famous muckraking reporter,

whose “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column was read by fifty mil-

lion people in six hundred newspapers.14 Pearson was also known to

be close to President Johnson and other powerful Washington figures,

including Chief Justice Earl Warren. By revealing the Castro assassina-

tion plots and the “turned-around assassins” story to Pearson, Rosselli

would show those in power that he wasn’t bluffing, and that he wanted

CIA help with his immigration problem. In addition, if Pearson printed

the story, it would present the Mafia not as potential suspects in JFK’s

murder, but as patriots who had tried to help the US government—

only to be caught up in a Bobby Kennedy plot that Castro turned to his

own advantage. With this one crucial leak, Rosselli could help himself,

deflect suspicion in JFK’s assassination, and damage Bobby’s political

reputation.

To help spread the story, Rosselli used Edward Morgan, well known

as an attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, even though Morgan wasn’t handling

Hoffa’s current appeal. Ed Morgan, a former FBI agent, was highly

respected in Washington and could use attorney-client privilege to

shield his contact with Rosselli. Pearson’s junior partner, journalist Jack

Anderson, was involved with Ed Morgan in yet another business ven-

ture with Howard Hughes, so Rosselli was essentially working with the

same trusted people he’d used in the Hughes–Desert Inn deal.15

On January 13, 1967, Jack Anderson arranged for Drew Pearson to

meet attorney Morgan and hear from “a client of his who was on the

fringe of the underworld [how] Bobby Kennedy had organized a group

who went to Cuba to kill Castro; that all were killed or imprisoned . . .

that subsequently Castro decided to utilize the same procedure to kill

President Kennedy.” Pearson was amazed at the story, but Morgan was a

distinguished attorney, who had helped direct the Congressional inves-

tigation of Pearl Harbor. Pearson wanted to take the story directly to

President Johnson, and Morgan agreed.16

At the White House on January 16, 1967, Pearson told LBJ the story in a

one-hour meeting. Pearson wrote in his diary: “I told the president about

Ed Morgan’s law client . . . Lyndon listened carefully and made no com-

ment. There wasn’t much he could say.” LBJ didn’t take the account very

seriously at first, since he knew little or nothing about the CIA-Mafia

plots and had only a partial understanding of Bobby Kennedy’s and the

CIA’s extensive 1963 efforts to eliminate Fidel. Pearson told LBJ he didn’t

plan to write the story until November, when the statute of limitations

on conspiracy ran out. LBJ suggested that Pearson take the story to Chief

Justice Earl Warren; Pearson outlined the tale to a “decidedly skeptical”

Warren on January 19, 1967.17 However, Warren may not have wanted

to let Pearson know that he had heard something about the CIA-Mafia

plots when he headed the Warren Commission. Pearson asked Warren

to meet with Morgan to hear more for himself, but Warren declined,

saying he would refer the matter to the Secret Service.

Though Warren appeared skeptical to Morgan, the Chief Justice took

the matter seriously enough to meet with the head of the US Secret Ser-

vice, James Rowley. In Warren’s private chambers at the US Supreme

Court on January 31, 1967, he told Rowley the story of Morgan’s under-

world client. After the meeting, Rowley attempted to have his agents

interview Morgan, who didn’t keep the appointment. The attorney

knew that spreading a story privately to LBJ or Earl Warren was one

thing, but making statements to federal agents was quite another.18

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, a “Police Beat” column in New Orleans’

main newspaper mentioned very briefly that Jim Garrison was looking

into JFK’s assassination. But an assistant DA cited in the column down-

played the inquiry’s importance by making it sound routine, so the item

received little attention in New Orleans and none nationally.19

Whether Rowley learned about that article is not clear, but he did

receive word of the Miami Milteer article three days after his meet-

ing with Warren. That triggered a new Secret Service investigation of

Milteer, but little appears to have been done, and Rowley continued to

sit on the story Warren had given him.

Bobby Kennedy didn’t know that a story saying he was behind Castro

assassination attempts was floating around Washington at the highest

levels. The New York Senator was becoming more involved in Congres-

sional issues, including his growing conviction that the war in Vietnam

was wrong and the US needed to stop its escalation. On February 6,

1967, Bobby had a contentious meeting with President Johnson about

the matter, in which LBJ accused Bobby of leaking news about a secret

peace feeler from Hanoi. Bobby protested that he’d done no such thing,

then argued that LBJ should stop the bombing of North Vietnam. The

meeting ended badly, with Johnson saying he would end Bobby’s politi-

cal career and destroy Bobby’s “dove friends.”20

As the Rosselli-Anderson saga unfolds, it’s important to keep in mind

that for years, noted historians who had looked at the issue assumed

that President Johnson eventually ordered Anderson and Pearson to

publish Rosselli’s story, as a way to get back at Bobby Kennedy over

LBJ’s differences with him regarding Vietnam. The fact that the story

wasn’t published right after LBJ’s contentious February 6 meeting with

Bobby helps to show that wasn’t the case. As we’ll detail shortly, Presi-

dent Johnson’s now available White House tapes, the timing of Bobby’s

next confrontation with LBJ over Vietnam, and the Rosselli story’s sub-

sequent appearances all demonstrate that LBJ wasn’t responsible for the

story’s ultimate release.21

On February 13, Secret Service Chief Rowley tried to toss the political hot

potato of Morgan’s JFK-Castro assassination story to his rival, J. Edgar

Hoover. But the FBI Director told Rowley the FBI “is not conducting any

investigation regarding this matter.” The Bureau would, however, be

willing to listen to Pearson, Morgan, or “Mr. Morgan’s source” if they

decided to “volunteer any information.”22

For Johnny Rosselli, the wait must have been frustrating. His story

had yet to find its way to his main target, the CIA, either through private

channels or via Pearson’s column. Headlines about JFK’s assassination

would soon explode across the front pages of America’s newspapers,

in a way unseen since the Warren Report’s release—but they wouldn’t

be about Rosselli’s story.

FBI reports confirm that around February 12, Carlos Marcello and

Santo Trafficante met for three days in New Orleans. The FBI had finally

developed several informants who, while not part of Marcello’s inner

circle, could provide basic information about the godfather’s comings

and goings, as well as Marcello’s extensive use of pay phones to make

and receive especially sensitive calls. One of the FBI’s informants said,

“Today Carlos Marcello feels he ‘owns’ [DA Jim] Garrison [though the]

informant was not aware of any activities made between Marcello and

Garrison.” Just days after Marcello and Trafficante wrapped up their

meetings, Garrison would become national news.23

The front page of the February 17, 1967,
New Orleans States-Item
blared,

“DA Here Launches Full JFK Death ‘Plot’ Probe,” signaling the start

of the publicity barrage that dominated media coverage of the JFK

assassination for the next two years. Coming on the heels of the recent

books and articles indicating that a conspiracy murdered JFK, the article

launched a firestorm of coverage across the country, and reporters were

soon streaming into the Crescent City to cover the story. Garrison later

claimed he had wanted to continue his investigation in secret and was

not yet ready to have it publicized—but he didn’t ask the newspaper

to hold the story, when he was shown an advance copy before it went

to press.24

On February 18, the New Orleans newspaper revealed that David

Ferrie was a prime target of District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investiga-

tion. Ferrie claimed he had sought out the reporter to tell his side of

the story, so that he couldn’t be “railroaded” by Garrison. More likely,

Ferrie wanted to make sure his former employer Carlos Marcello knew

he wasn’t cooperating with the DA. None of the stories filed at the

time, or in the coming weeks, mentioned Ferrie’s work for Marcello in

1963, though Garrison’s investigators and some journalists were aware

of it.25

Garrison made a statement to the press that only attracted more

national attention when he declared, “There were other people besides

Lee Harvey Oswald involved [in JFK’s murder, and] New Orleans was

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

a factor in the planning. . . . We already had the names of the people in

the initial planning . . . arrests will be made. Charges will be filed and

convictions will be obtained.” As would often be the case, Garrison’s

declarations went far beyond any evidence or witnesses he had in hand.

Garrison’s detractors call it political grandstanding and a play for pub-

licity. His supporters say he was trying to smoke out conspirators by

making them think he had more than he did, or that he was trying

to prod federal authorities and Bobby Kennedy to investigate a New

Orleans connection to JFK’s murder—one that Garrison himself couldn’t

expose if he hoped to remain in office. Our assessment is that while his

supporters’ view had some validity at the start, the detractors’ version

came to be more and more true as the investigation dragged on.

The Garrison story developed a local angle in Miami, where on Feb-

ruary 18 and 19, 1967, newspapers revealed that Garrison’s investiga-

tors had been there for some time, looking for a Cuban involved with

Oswald. Though none of those Miami articles mentioned the stories,

printed just two weeks earlier, about the taped informant (Milteer)

talking about JFK’s assassination, they did point out that Garrison was

using a Miami-based detective to search for Oswald’s Cuban associate.

While the New Orleans newspaper said the Miami detective was “a

close friend of one of Oswald’s Cuban friends,” the detective denied

that to the
Miami Herald
. Years later, Congressional investigator Gaeton

Fonzi would write that a source told him it was the detective himself

who “was in contact with Oswald,” and that same detective “was . . . in

Dealey Plaza on November 22nd [1963].”26

The Miami detective, brought into the case by Albert Fowler, was

later alleged to have ties to organized crime and drug trafficking. The

detective also served in an exile organization with Manuel Artime and

would later be questioned about a terrorist bombing in the 1970s that

involved Fowler’s good friend Felipe Rivero. Garrison’s original inter-

est in Miami had been to find Ferrie’s friend Eladio del Valle, but some

authors believe the Miami detective played a role in diverting Garrison

toward looking for other Cuban exiles with little or no connection to

the case.27

Former Senate investigator Al Tarabocchia described Eladio del Valle

as a “gun for hire” who was involved with “anything that had to do

with smuggling, gunrunning.” He said del Valle acted as “both a bag-

man and a hitman.” Now the hitman himself must have been nervous

once del Valle learned that the New Orleans DA was looking for him.