Legacy of Secrecy (93 page)

Dan Moldea writes that Galante controlled a French Connection heroin

route that extended “from Montreal to Toronto, Ontario, then to Wind-

sor, and across the river to Detroit.” That Montreal heroin route involved

associates of Michel Victor Mertz, and Galante was aligned with both

Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante.33

The Lewisburg inmate told the FBI that he’d overheard Hoffa telling

the two Italian-Americans, “I have a contract out on Kennedy and if he

ever gets in the primaries or ever gets elected, the contract will be ful-

filled within six months.” The inmate named two other criminals who’d

also heard Hoffa’s remarks that day. One was a bank robber, “originally

from St. Louis, Missouri,” who was slated to be paroled soon. Two weeks

after hearing Hoffa talk about his contract on Bobby, the Lewisburg

inmate was talking privately with the Teamster boss. Curious about

Hoffa’s earlier remarks, he casually “asked Hoffa what he thought about

[Bobby] Kennedy. He stated Hoffa immediately began an emotional

tirade over Kennedy’s use of wiretapping and Hoffa’s conviction and

incarceration at Lewisburg. He ended the conversation by stating, ‘Right

now Kennedy’s in no danger; but if he gets into a primary or gets elected,

I won’t say how or when, but he’ll get knocked off.’”34

When the inmate talked to the FBI, he wasn’t seeking a deal, special

treatment, or publicity. Instead, he told the FBI that “in view of Hoffa’s

power and influence in this country, he feared for his life and under no

circumstances would he testify to the above information.” Another FBI

report might tie into the inmate’s story: John Davis writes that a year

later, just weeks before Bobby’s murder, “an inmate informant in . . .

Lewisburg told the FBI that he had overheard Jimmy Hoffa and New

York Mafia boss Carmine Galante, an ally of Carlos Marcello’s, discuss-

ing a ‘mob contract to kill Bob Kennedy.’” Names and other information

in FBI memos about this matter are still censored, so how, or if, this infor-

mation relates to the May 1967 Lewisburg report can’t be determined.

As we’ll detail in Chapter 60, the FBI apparently didn’t ask Hoffa about

his May 1967 threat against Bobby for more than a year—until six weeks

after Bobby’s assassination.35

If Hoffa was making plans in May 1967 to have Bobby killed in case

he ran for president, there was one assassin Hoffa couldn’t use, a loose

end he would have to take care of before his plans could proceed: Frank

Chavez, Hoffa’s enforcer, whom authorities knew had planned to kill

Bobby Kennedy on two different occasions, most recently in March 1967.

If any assassination attempt were made against Bobby in the coming

year, Chavez would be an obvious and immediate suspect, one tied

directly to Hoffa.

Shortly after Hoffa’s May 1967 threat to have Bobby killed, Frank

Chavez was mysteriously shot by his own Teamster bodyguard. Bobby’s

former prosecutor for the Chavez case, Tom Kennelly, later told a jour-

nalist that Chavez’s “bodyguard just pulled out a gun and nailed him

one day. . . . No one seemed to know what it was about.” Kennelly told

us that after the bodyguard “shot Chavez dead at his desk . . . he got

some time, a couple of years,” in prison. However, there is no record of

Hoffa’s taking any action against the bodyguard for suddenly murder-

ing Chavez.36 Frank Chavez could have been the victim of a random

argument, but he may also have been the victim of bad timing—wanting

to kill Bobby Kennedy just a few months too soon, in a way that would

have clearly pointed to Hoffa.

Chapter Thirty-seven

By late May of 1967 in New Orleans, Jim Garrison was getting ready to

reveal Marcello’s role in JFK’s murder, as well as the fact that JFK had

approved a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1963. Both of those Gar-

rison findings are little known today, even among JFK scholars, despite

having been reported (briefly) in local and national media. Their obscu-

rity can be credited to Marcello’s continuing efforts to divert Garrison,

and to the role of Bobby Kennedy’s close friend Walter Sheridan in an

upcoming tide of negative publicity designed to discredit Garrison. Just

as in 1963, in 1968 it was difficult to expose Marcello’s role in JFK’s mur-

der without also revealing parts of the JFK-Almeida coup plan.

Garrison was telling a few journalists about the Mafia’s role in JFK’s

murder by mid-May 1967. An FBI memo describes a Lafayette, Louisi-

ana, television broadcast, called
Garrison and the Mafia
, that aired on May

22 and May 23, 1967, which said that Garrison “believed that organized

crime . . . is responsible, along with other anti-Castroites, for the assas-

sination.” The TV report went on to say that “organized crime wanted

the assassination to appear as though it had been done at the instigation

of Castro, and this would . . . arouse the United States to a point where

Castro would be removed from power in Cuba, thereby allowing reopen-

ing of the gambling casinos.” The “report also mentioned that David

Ferrie may have ‘flown some missions for a very important member of

the syndicate who has been a long-time resident of Louisiana.’” While

the TV report didn’t name Carlos Marcello, the FBI memo did.1

The Lafayette TV report showed that Garrison or one of his staff was

close to uncovering the truth. However, before the Mafia angle received

national publicity, Garrison dropped it, having apparently been diverted

by Marcello. Within weeks of the TV report, Marcello’s associates and

Louisiana Senator Russell Long would provide Garrison with a new

suspect, designed to deflect suspicion from Marcello, free Hoffa, and

embarrass Bobby Kennedy: Edward Grady Partin, the main witness

Bobby and Walter Sheridan had used to send Hoffa to prison.

It’s tragically ironic that just a few months earlier, Bobby and Sheridan

might have welcomed Garrison’s focus on Marcello. But at the same

time that the Lafayette television station was highlighting Garrison’s

Mafia suspicions, the national media was publicizing an area of Garri-

son’s interest that Bobby wanted to remain hidden—especially in the

wake of Jack Anderson’s revelations. The New Orleans District Attor-

ney was still going after Clay Shaw, but in mid-May 1967, the
New York

Times
, UPI, and the
Washington Post
had begun reporting new angles

in Garrison’s investigation. Their news stories were summarized in a

May 17, 1967, letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General Ramsey

Clark. It said Garrison’s thesis was “that Oswald was a CIA agent, was

violently anti-Communist, and was recruited by CIA for an operation,

approved by President Kennedy, the purpose of which was to assas-

sinate Fidel Castro.”2

Hoover was worried because other news stories reported that “Gar-

rison claims that Oswald was probably a CIA agent who worked under-

cover with anti-Castro Cubans with the knowledge of Federal agents.”3

Articles in the
Washington Post
and
Washington Evening Star
were even

more specific. As summarized in a June 2, 1967, memo to the assistant

US attorney general:

Garrison claims that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Ken-

nedy but that the President was assassinated by five anti-Castro

Cubans who were angered over his handling of the Bay of Pigs

invasion. . . . The assassins were former CIA employees. . . . Garrison

has said that he does not believe the CIA planned the Kennedy mur-

der, or knew of it beforehand, but that the CIA is making every effort

to prevent his office from trailing or learning the whereabouts of the

assassins.4

Those reports would also have alarmed CIA Director Richard Helms.

The CIA’s copies of the above memos about Garrison are grouped in

a CIA file at the National Archives with earlier FBI memos from 1965

about reports from a Trafficante-linked exile about a “plot to assassinate

Fidel Castro [involving] Major Juan Almeida.”5 Helms and the CIA had

already been trying to stymie Garrison’s investigation, but these new

revelations would ensure that Helms would continue those efforts.

Garrison was getting close to the truth, especially when the above

disclosures are coupled with his suspicion of Carlos Marcello, which

had not yet appeared in the national press. Cuban exiles like Martino

had been involved in JFK’s murder, as well as CIA employees like David

462

LEGACY OF SECRECY

Morales. JFK had in fact approved a plan that would have eliminated

Castro, and Oswald apparently had some contact with that plan.

Unfortunately, Bobby Kennedy didn’t trust Garrison. The FBI had

planted his seeds of distrust in 1963, when the Bureau warned Bobby’s

Marcello prosecutors not to cooperate with Garrison. Decades later,

Bobby’s lead Marcello prosecutor, John Diuguid, told us that “in retro-

spect, Garrison had some interesting stuff [about Marcello] and perhaps

we should have taken him more seriously.”6

By May 1967 it was too late, even though Garrison’s suspicions mir-

rored the findings of Bobby’s secret investigators. As we noted earlier,

Frank Mankiewicz concluded that JFK was murdered by “the mob,

anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and maybe rogue CIA agents.” According

to John Davis, Walter Sheridan had “conducted an informal investi-

gation and concluded guardedly that Marcello might well have been

involved.” According to Walter Sheridan’s son, this search left Sheridan

“‘convinced’ that President Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy.”

Sheridan had been assisted in New Orleans by a former fellow Hoffa

prosecutor, Frank Grimsley, who shared Sheridan’s feeling that Marcello

was behind JFK’s murder.7

However, when Sheridan tried to tell Bobby what he’d found, Bobby

stopped him and said he “didn’t want to know.” Frank Mankiewicz

faced the same reaction whenever he tried to share his conclusions with

Bobby. Neither Mankiewicz nor Sheridan was among the handful of

Bobby’s associates who knew about the JFK-Almeida coup plan, and

keeping that crucial information from them probably also weighed

heavily on Bobby.8

If Bobby didn’t want to hear his own investigators’ conclusions, he

certainly didn’t want Garrison airing JFK’s plot to eliminate Fidel as part

of a public spectacle, especially after Anderson’s articles. Sadly, Garri-

son’s focus on the Mafia and hints of Marcello’s involvement weren’t

receiving national attention, so it’s doubtful that Bobby was aware of

them—and even if he was, his distrust of Garrison meant the prospect

of joining forces with the publicity-seeking District Attorney just wasn’t

an option. Instead, Bobby became one of those determined to stop the

Garrison inquiry by discrediting it.

By early June 1967, Bobby Kennedy had joined a long list of officials

and influential people who wanted to see Garrison’s investigation shut

down before it revealed embarrassing or classified operations. In addi-

tion to NBC’s Walter Sheridan, the list included LBJ, Helms, Hoover,

Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and undoubtedly other members of

the intelligence community in the high levels of the DIA and Naval Intel-

ligence. Two major television specials about Garrison were in the works,

and some of those men may have exerted influence to ensure that the

productions slammed the District Attorney while avoiding Garrison’s

suspicion of the Mafia and his attempt to tie CIA-backed Cuban exile

assassins to a 1963 JFK-approved plan to eliminate Fidel.

Almost as if to counter the pro-conspiracy news coming out of New

Orleans and the recent surge of JFK conspiracy books, CBS began pre-

paring a special called
The Warren Report
in the spring of 1967. Former

FBI agent William Turner was assisting Garrison at the time, and he was

originally told by a CBS field producer that “We’re going to let the chips

fall where they may. I’ve been assured of that [by CBS officials].” It was

to be “an objective look at the criticism [of the Warren Report] and [a]

search for fresh evidence.” Turner writes that a “CBS correspondent . . .

reported that seven out of the eight teams sent into the field came back

with a conclusion of conspiracy.” However, before the special was fin-

ished, the field producer said, “The whole tone was changed so as to

completely reinforce the Warren Report.” Turner writes that the change

came “after a phone call from Washington to [the] CBS President. . . .

The caller was a high government official.”9

The NBC
White Paper
special that Walter Sheridan produced appar-

ently targeted Garrison almost from the start. Sheridan’s wife says her

husband had “decided that Jim Garrison was ‘a fraud—a dishonest man,

morally and intellectually’ within twenty-four hours of his arrival in

New Orleans.” According to David Talbot, Sheridan felt Garrison “was