Legacy of Secrecy (92 page)

of ammunition for these weapons.” That arrangement might have been

related to an incident two days later, in which author Jane Franklin

writes that Cuban authorities captured several exiles in a speedboat

who were “armed with high-powered rifles, cyanide bullets, and a plot

to assassinate [Fidel].” On July 19, 1967, an FBI memo said that Juan

Bosch and five of his men “were indicted in Miami . . . and charged with

conspiracy to export arms.” However, they were freed on $1,000 “recog-

nizance bonds.” Five days later, the FBI says, Bosch and some of his men

were “indicted at Macon, [Georgia] . . . for attempting to export arms,”

yet they were freed once more on only “recognizance bonds.”24

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

The soft treatment of Bosch, his men, and Rivero’s associates by

US authorities raise suspicion that their activities were approved at

least tacitly by someone in the CIA. The same idea applies to Felipe

Rivero, whom the FBI described on July 11, 1967, as “excludable and

deportable”—yet he was never deported. Likely not approved by

the CIA, however, were the six Cuban exiles who, according to the

FBI, “hijacked a 380-foot ship in Miami” to use in an attack on Cuba;

“their plan failed, and they escaped. They were indicted in Miami on

7/26/67.”25 That was the type of bad publicity the CIA didn’t need.

By the summer of 1967, the CIA’s anti-Castro operations were clearly

approaching, or actually in, a state of disarray. FBI files are full of reports

of bickering and backbiting between Cuban exile groups and leaders,

some of which turned violent.

Things got worse on July 23, 1967, when Desmond FitzGerald, the

CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans, died of a heart attack, further disrupt-

ing the CIA’s already problematic Cuban operations. Bobby Kennedy

attended the funeral of the man he sometimes played tennis with,

probably never realizing the secrets FitzGerald (and Helms) had with-

held from him. Helms appointed his trusted former deputy Thomas

Karamessines to take FitzGerald’s position.26 As for Cuban operations,

Helms needed someone experienced, someone he could trust, to assume

command and get them back on track. Just as Helms had turned to

E. Howard Hunt almost a year earlier, when Helms needed someone

seasoned to deal with the influx of new JFK conspiracy books, Helms

called on another familiar associate he trusted, David Atlee Phillips.

Like Hunt, Phillips had the advantage of not only being experienced,

but already knowing about (and having worked on) the CIA’s most sen-

sitive Cuban operation: AMWORLD and the coup plan with Almeida,

the remnants of which still involved the ongoing covert monitoring

and support of Almeida’s family members outside Cuba. Phillips’s

experience with Cuban operations from the Bay of Pigs to AMWORLD,

coupled with his background in journalism, would also make him useful

in dealing with disclosures emerging from Jim Garrison’s investigation.

In fact, by October 1967, because of a new book mentioning Manuel

Artime, Harry Williams, Tony Varona, and Alberto Fowler, Phillips

would write a long memo about the cover-up of the CIA’s secret Bay of

Pigs base just outside of New Orleans.27

In addition, the deniable way in which Phillips controlled Cuban

exile Antonio Veciana—by using the deep-cover identity of “Maurice

Bishop”—typified the more hands-off model the CIA was beginning to

use with more of its operatives. Finally, since Phillips had been involved

with activities such as meeting Oswald, Helms would have known that

Phillips had just as much reason to avoid publicity and squelch criticism

of the Warren Report as Helms did.

For all of those reasons, from Helms’s perspective, Phillips was a

logical choice to take over the fight against Castro. Hunt could not

assume that position, because he was busy managing the CIA’s rela-

tionship with publishers and running covert operations for western

Europe—and because of his problematic official history with Cuban

operations. Phillips wrote in his published autobiography that within

weeks of FitzGerald’s death, he had left his post as Station Chief of the

Dominican Republic and was back in the US, meeting President Lyndon

Johnson and becoming the CIA’s Chief of Cuban operations.28 Soon,

Phillips would have several AMWORLD veterans, including David

Morales, pursuing a top Cuban target in Bolivia: Che Guevara.

It’s important to point out that relatively few CIA files have been

disclosed about the scope and extent of the CIA’s Cuban operations

from 1967 onward, in stark contrast to the information available about

the period from 1959 to 1966. That might be because Phillips and other

Cuban operatives were later involved in various aspects of Watergate

and were investigated regarding JFK’s assassination, while exiles like

Posada and Rivero were linked to terrorist bombings in the 1970s that

caused international incidents. It is this lack of CIA files that makes it

difficult to determine which exiles were acting on their own, and which

the CIA supported or sanctioned.

From the perspective of Phillips, Helms, and the CIA, their task in

recruiting exiles had become more difficult. Fewer exiles, especially

inspirational leaders, were willing to risk their lives in the fight against

Fidel. Finding such men had not been easy in 1963, just months after the

Bay of Pigs prisoner release and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but by 1967

it was even more difficult. Moderate leaders, like Harry Williams, had

settled into family life and were building businesses, while others, like

Manolo Ray, had moved away from Miami. The exiles who were willing

to risk their lives, like Rivero and Bosch, were also harder to control and

prone to violent attacks. That left Phillips with exiles like Posada and

Antonio Veciana. Because the press, especially the emerging left-wing

media, was starting to look at domestic CIA operations, Phillips would

soon have both men based outside of the US—and eventually working

together on an attempt to assassinate Fidel.29

Phillips’s new assignment coincided with Hunt’s becoming Chief of

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

European Covert Operations, meaning that both AMWORLD veterans

had done quite well for themselves and had avoided the exile faced by

some of their fellow former AMWORLD officials. Richard Helms was

probably relieved once Phillips took over Cuban operations and could

help to monitor developments in Jim Garrison’s investigation, since

Helms still had his hands full with Vietnam and increased domestic

surveillance.

In May 1967, Carlos Marcello had an urgent matter to attend to: the first

journalist to link him directly to JFK’s assassination. The journalist’s

account being readied for publication had nothing to do with Marcello’s

ties to David Ferrie or Jack Ruby, or any of the disclosures from the Gar-

rison investigation. Instead, it revealed Marcello’s fall 1962 outburst

about JFK, made to a few associates in what the godfather thought were

the secure confines of his immense Churchill Farms property.

The writer was Ed Reid, a longtime crime reporter who had coau-

thored
The Green Felt Jungle
in 1963, the book that first exposed Johnny

Rosselli’s Las Vegas influence and lavish lifestyle. Assisting with the

research on that book had been private detective Ed Becker, who in 1962

had gone with Marcello to Churchill Farms to discuss a business propo-

sition. With Becker were two of Marcello’s most trusted associates, Carlo

Roppolo and Jack Liberto, Marcello’s bodyguard and personal barber.

Becker heard Marcello rage against Bobby Kennedy over what the god-

father saw as Bobby’s persecution of him. Marcello said that if he killed

Bobby, JFK would simply send the US military after him—but if JFK

were killed, then Bobby’s power would be over. (Congressional inves-

tigators later confirmed Becker’s account and found him credible.)30

By 1967, Ed Reid was working on his next book about the Mafia,

The Grim Reapers
, and Becker allowed Reid to recount a brief version

of Marcello’s threat against JFK, as long as the detective’s name wasn’t

used. Since Becker said he had told two FBI agents about Marcello’s

1962 threat, on May 6, 1967, Reid asked Los Angeles FBI officials about

the incident, and showed them his manuscript.

Word traveled fast to Marcello’s associates, and the next day, an inter-

mediary for top Chicago Mafia attorney Sidney Korshak contacted the

Los Angeles FBI office. Korshak, whom the Justice Department called

one of “the most powerful members of the underworld,” had been help-

ing Johnny Rosselli and the Chicago Mafia bury damaging informa-

tion since 1941. An expert at forcing Chicago’s two largest newspapers

to soft-pedal his mob connections, and a man with ties to Hollywood

power brokers, Korshak was the ideal person to suppress Becker’s Mar-

cello revelation in Ed Reid’s forthcoming book.31

Sidney Korshak tried to damage Becker’s credibility and reputation

to the FBI. Even though J. Edgar Hoover had told the Warren Commis-

sion that JFK’s murder would remain an open case, and that “any infor-

mation coming to us from any source will be thoroughly investigated,”

exactly the opposite happened in May 1967. Despite FBI files describing

Korshak’s Mafia ties, the Bureau failed to investigate Becker’s story and

accepted Korshak’s allegations at face value. The FBI still had pending

charges against Marcello for punching a New Orleans FBI agent, but it

didn’t bother to tell that agent or the New Orleans office about Becker’s

accusation against Marcello.32

Korshak’s intermediary tried to intervene directly with Ed Reid, after

which an FBI agent visited Reid and both tried to convince Reid to drop

Becker’s Marcello account. Neither succeeded, and Becker’s account

remained in the book. Reid’s manuscript also contained the first detailed

overview of Marcello’s criminal empire, as well as sections about Santo

Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli (though it didn’t link those two to JFK’s

murder).

However,
The Grim Reapers
wasn’t published until two years later, in

1969, long after the media had lost interest in Garrison’s investigation,

so the mainstream press gave the passage little attention. It’s unclear

if the efforts of Korshak, or others, had any effect on the book’s delay.

If Reid’s information had been published earlier, at the height of the

media’s interest in Garrison, it could have turned the spotlight of sus-

picion toward Marcello.

Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli were achieving much of what they

had been striving for by May 1967: The FBI had backed off Rosselli

because of the leaks to Anderson, their names hadn’t surfaced in the

press as suspects in JFK’s murder, and Bobby was publicly professing

his support for LBJ. In addition, Marcello and Trafficante could take

advantage of new heroin opportunities because of the Expo 67 situation

in Montreal. While Rosselli didn’t have a role in the heroin network,

he could relax once more among the stars at Hollywood’s Friars Club

without worrying about his immigration status.

But a major piece of unfinished business for Rosselli, Trafficante, and

especially Marcello was Jimmy Hoffa. Marcello had so far been unsuc-

cessful in using the Mafia’s $2 million fund to get Hoffa out of prison, but

would soon increase his efforts. Hoffa, in Lewisburg Federal Prison since

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

early March, was getting impatient—and focusing his anger on Bobby

Kennedy. Hoffa still hoped that Marcello and his associates might come

through; he knew how much they wanted to keep receiving loans from

the Teamster Pension Fund. But Hoffa knew that if Bobby ever became

president, his chances of getting out—or staying out—were nil. Hoffa

probably feared that even if he were able to win release, as president,

Bobby could simply have him prosecuted again . . . and again, and again.

Hoffa wanted to make sure that couldn’t happen.

According to FBI files, on May 30, 1967, an inmate overheard Hoffa

say “that he had a contract out on Senator Robert F. Kennedy.” The

inmate’s account contained credible details, and “stated that on or about

Memorial Day, 1967, he was in the dining hall at the Lewisburg Federal

Penitentiary and at the table next to him was James Hoffa, who was

talking to the two . . . individuals [both Americans] of Italian descent.”

One of the individuals wasn’t named, but his physical description and

age (“55–58 years old”) fit that of fifty-seven-year-old Mafia underboss

Carmine Galante, Hoffa’s closest mob confidant in prison. According to

Ed Reid, Galante had been prosecuted when Bobby was Attorney Gen-

eral, and “sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy to violate the narcotics

laws.” Galante had “many associates in Montreal,” and Hoffa expert