The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (13 page)

Carlos Marcello was free to expand his criminal empire, using murders when needed, and according to the New Orleans Crime Commission those included “the gangland-style killing of two of
Marcello’s narcotics associates,” according to John H. Davis. The heroin network Marcello shared with Trafficante was their most lucrative, most secret—and thus most deadly—enterprise.

Marcello continued to rely on his own brothers and extended family when possible. Of his six brothers, the youngest, Joe, was his favorite and most trusted, acting “as Carlos’s right-hand man [and] immediate underboss.” But each of the others—Pete, Pascal, Vincent, Tony, and Sammy—also played key roles in helping manage Marcello’s ever-expanding empire.

There appeared to be no concerns for Carlos Marcello on the federal front since Richard Nixon enjoyed increasing power and respect as the 1950s advanced, due to a series of health issues plaguing President Eisenhower. Nixon had weathered the only two potential scandals he’d recently faced, aided in one case by his long-time patron, billionaire Howard Hughes. The other scandal involved exposure of the mob ties of attorney Murray Chotiner, Nixon’s closest advisor.

Richard Nixon and Murray Chotiner had longtime and well-documented links to the Mafia. Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen admitted giving Nixon $5,000 (nearly $50,000 in today’s money) in Nixon’s first race for Congress in California, in 1946. Cohen upped that to $75,000 (almost $700,000 today) for Nixon’s 1950 Senate run. Chotiner, Nixon’s chief political aide and strategist from 1946 until the time of Watergate, had arranged those payoffs. Chotiner, an attorney, and his brother had represented 221 of Cohen’s bookmakers in just one four-year period.

Chotiner wasn’t the only Nixon associate tied to the Mafia. Richard Nixon’s best friend from the 1950s until his death—Charles “Bebe” Rebozo—had extensive banking, real estate, and business ties to the mob, including associates of Meyer Lansky and Santo
Trafficante. Evidence, including later admissions by former government officials such as John Mitchell, shows that Rebozo often fronted businesses and shady deals for Nixon in locales ranging from Cuba to Florida to the Bahamas.

However, Chotiner’s role as an advisor to Vice President Nixon had caught the eye of Democrats in Congress. As it happened, a Congressional committee probing Chotiner publicized the case before having enough evidence against him, and Chotiner avoided any charges. He did have to assume a less prominent role for the Vice President, away from the public eye, but Nixon’s other Mafia ties remained unexposed.

One of the counsels on the committee investigating Chotiner was a young Robert F. Kennedy, and he learned from the mistakes he saw in that investigation. In 1957 Robert Kennedy teamed up with his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. They were investigating Teamster corruption starting with union president Dave Beck, the only major union leader to support the generally anti-union Eisenhower–Nixon ticket. After corruption charges forced Beck to step down, John and Robert Kennedy focused on his successor, Jimmy Hoffa.

The Kennedys’ investigation of Hoffa would have crucial ramifications for all concerned. The corruption and Mafia ties the brothers uncovered would lead them to focus on exposing Hoffa’s crimes, first through Congressional hearings and later through prosecutions that would eventually send Hoffa to prison. Their actions began a blood feud between the Kennedys and Hoffa that would last until JFK’s assassination, followed five years later by Robert’s. Finally, the Mafia ties uncovered in 1957 by the Kennedy brothers’ Hoffa investigation soon led them to focus extensively on fighting organized crime.

Some say that effort was a way for the politically ambitious John to counter rumors about his own immensely wealthy father’s ties to or friendship with members of organized crime. Others claim that JFK pursued the mob to garner publicity, and it is true that he generated huge amounts of media coverage for the anti-Mafia hearings he pushed. But from newspaper headlines alone, there was clearly a need for someone to take on the Mafia in America since J. Edgar Hoover and the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration seemed so reluctant to do so. Starting in the late 1950s, John F. Kennedy took up that fight.

The Kennedys wasted no time in going after Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, both soon to be close allies with the new Teamster leader, Jimmy Hoffa. Senator Kennedy dispatched a trusted investigator, former journalist Pierre Salinger, to New Orleans to look into Marcello’s criminal activities firsthand. Before his death, Salinger spoke to me about that and described the fear and intimidation he encountered in New Orleans in the late 1950s. While Salinger could document a clear paper trail, people at all levels were afraid to talk; he himself worried that he wouldn’t survive the experience. However, aided by the New Orleans Crime Commission, a group of concerned local citizens headed by Aaron Kohn, Salinger helped the Kennedys put together a remarkable list of Marcello’s criminal enterprises.

The Kennedys knew one thing Marcello feared was publicity, so they arranged to force him to come to Washington to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, chaired by Arkansas Senator John McClellan. However, the Kennedys were its driving force, and they received the lion’s share of the enormous radio, newspaper, and television publicity the hearings generated.

The Kennedys and Salinger knew that Marcello would simply take the Fifth, so they devised a strategy designed to convey Marcello’s story to the American people anyway. First they extensively questioned Aaron Kohn of the Crime Commission, whose answers gave a detailed overview of Marcello’s life and numerous crimes. Next they questioned Salinger, who provided more documentation and details about the complex web of companies controlled by Marcello.

Finally, on March 24, 1959, Carlos Marcello himself was forced to go before the glare of television lights in Washington to confront the Kennedys’ Senate committee.

*
That coup involved CIA agents E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips, and David Morales, all of whom played roles in the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro; Morales would later make a credible confession to JFK’s murder.

*
The Las Vegas strip is actually an unincorporated town named Paradise.

CHAPTER 5

Marcello, Cuba, and Jack Ruby

R
OBERT F. KENNEDY personally confronted godfather Carlos Marcello for the first and only time on Tuesday, March 24, 1959, in a Senate hearing room on Capitol Hill. RFK was the brash, blunt-spoken Chief Counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, which now focused on organized crime. But he still maintained what was often described as a boyish demeanor, and that was especially true when compared with his older brother, Senator John F. Kennedy. However, on that day both JFK and Senator Barry Goldwater had other business to attend to and were not at the hearing. That left RFK in full command of the interrogation of Carlos Marcello, the first of a series of events involving the godfather that would result in tragedy for RFK, his brother, and at times even Marcello.

Attired in a well-tailored, expensive-looking pin-striped suit, the forty-nine-year-old godfather sat at the witness table. Dark glasses concealed his eyes, and he would wear them for the entire hearing. Though Marcello tried to maintain a relaxed image in his rare public appearances, he could be quick to anger; perhaps the dark glasses were intended to make it harder for RFK and the Senators to read his reactions. Seated beside Marcello was his top Washington attorney,
Jack Wasserman, one of the country’s best immigration attorneys. The fact that he chose Wasserman instead of a criminal defense attorney or a high-profile Washington power attorney showed that what Marcello feared most was his lack of citizenship. Unlike Santo Trafficante, Marcello couldn’t duck the Kennedys’ subpoena by traveling to another country. As a noncitizen, if Marcello ever left the United States he might be denied reentry, so Wasserman told him he had no other recourse than to report for the hearing.

With his bow tie and glasses, Wasserman looked nothing like a typical mob lawyer and more like a university professor. Next to Wasserman was one of the godfather’s brothers, Vincent Marcello, who ran the slot machines for his brother’s empire. In contrast to his compact, portly brother, Vincent was taller and more conventionally handsome. He looked like a well-dressed businessman, not a Mafia underboss.

Still, with his Roman profile and imperious attitude, Carlos Marcello was a commanding presence in the hearing room. But Robert Kennedy—who had already sparred with Jimmy Hoffa in earlier hearings—remained focused on his carefully prepared questions, designed to reveal to the American public the huge scope of Marcello’s criminal empire. Part of that involved exposing Marcello’s control of Dallas and important parts of the heroin trade. When RFK asked Marcello, “You are an associate of Joe Civello of Dallas, Texas, who attended the meeting at Apalachin?” Marcello replied, “I decline to answer on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.” A later Senate report would make it clear that “Joe Civello . . . controls all rackets in Dallas and vicinity.” Along with another Dallas Marcello underboss, restaurateur Joe Campisi Sr., Civello conveyed Marcello’s orders to lower-level mobsters in Dallas, such as Jack Ruby.

RFK then asked if Marcello was an associate of “Sam Carolla, who was deported in 1947 as a narcotics trafficker.” Marcello said only, “I decline to answer on the same ground.” However, other witnesses and huge charts clearly showed the importance of Marcello and New Orleans to what would soon become known as the French Connection narcotics trade.

RFK then asked, “Have you been able to use law enforcement officials to assist you in your business, Mr. Marcello?” Once again, Marcello fell back on his right to avoid incriminating himself, as he would for almost all the questions that day. Still, by the time RFK had finished his list of questions, they—along with information provided earlier by Assistant Counsel Pierre Salinger and Aaron Kohn of the New Orleans Crime Commission—had given the America press and public their first good overview of Marcello’s criminal empire: gambling, prostitution, corruption of public officials, real estate fraud, terrorizing legitimate businessmen, narcotics trafficking, and much more. Then came the time for the Senators to ask their questions. Since RFK had said that “Mr. Carlos Marcello has been under orders of deportation from the United States since about 1953,” much of their questioning centered on why he was still allowed to live in the United States. Kohn had earlier testified that Marcello had “been in court some 37 times in various appellate proceedings, and in various hearings” to avoid deportation, but it’s clear that some Senators felt some factor other than Jack Wasserman’s legal skill accounted for the current Administration’s failure to deport Marcello.

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina—later chairman of the famed Senate Watergate Committee—began by reminding Marcello of his two felony convictions and then asked “how a man with that kind of record can stay in the United States for five years, nine months,
twenty-four days after he is found to be an undesirable alien. . . . How have you managed to stay here?” Marcello eventually answered, “I wouldn’t know.” Senator Ervin expressed his frustration at the current Eisenhower–Nixon Administration, saying, “[T]he American people are entitled to more protection at the hands of the law than to have an undesirable alien who has committed serious felonies remain in this country.” He summed up by essentially calling Marcello a leech who preyed “upon law-abiding people [and who] ought to be removed from this country.”

South Dakota’s Senator Karl Mundt took up the cudgel against Marcello and the Eisenhower–Nixon Administration, commenting that Committee Chairman Senator John McClellan should “direct a letter to the Attorney General inquiring as to why this deportation has not been implemented.” Even so, Marcello left the hearing unbowed, and despite all the publicity, as long as President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon remained in office, no serious additional efforts were made to deport the godfather.

However, John and Robert Kennedy weren’t through with the Mafia, and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana was set to receive the same treatment accorded Marcello. Giancana was a former mob hit man, both ruthless and charming. (He would soon be involved in a well-publicized romance with Phyllis McGuire, one of America’s most popular singers at the time.) He wasn’t a godfather like Marcello but essentially ran the day-to-day operations of the Chicago mob for two elder Mafia chiefs. Giancana’s influence extended beyond Chicago, to Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Reno, with the help of his Mafia don, Johnny Rosselli.

On June 9, 1959, RFK verbally sparred with Sam Giancana, trying to draw him into a revealing response. RFK asked, “Would you tell
us, if you have opposition from anybody, that you dispose of them by having them stuffed in a trunk? Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana?” Giancana appeared to stifle a laugh, not taking the Committee and RFK’s questions seriously, leading RFK to ask, “Is there something funny about it, Mr. Giancana?” and “Would you tell us anything about any of your operations, or will you just giggle every time I ask you a question? I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.”

RFK was unable to prod Giancana to do more than plead the Fifth, which Giancana did over three dozen times. Nevertheless, as with Marcello, RFK was still able to expose Giancana’s criminal network, which included narcotics trafficking, something the Chicago Mafia for years disingenuously continued to claim it avoided. RFK also relied on questioning Pierre Salinger before the Committee to put even more of Giancana’s crimes on the record.

As they sought to question additional mob leaders, Senator Kennedy and RFK were stymied on one occasion by the CIA, foreshadowing problems with the Agency that would plague the two men even after JFK become President. In a 1975 report for the
New York Times
that was confirmed by two RFK aides, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh discovered that in 1959 the CIA had given a “free pass” to one mob boss for his help in trying to assassinate Fidel Castro for the US government. When RFK and his aides tried to question him in private, the Mafia chief replied, “You can’t touch me. I’ve got immunity.” Robert demanded to know “who gave you immunity?” The Mafia boss replied, “The CIA. I’m working for them, but I can’t talk about it. Top Secret.” RFK must have been stunned, but after looking into it, he found that “the CIA had made a deal with” the mob boss.