The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (18 page)

That still left Dulles the fake attack plan on Guantánamo, set to be staged by the exiles trained near New Orleans. Once their transport ship neared Guantánamo, the Cuban exiles were told that they were to put on the uniforms of Castro’s troops and stage an attack on the American base while thus disguised. This provocation would let the CIA and US Navy press JFK, who did not know about the operation, to respond against Castro with massive US military force. However, the Cuban exiles refused to undertake the bizarre, possibly suicidal landing and attack. They were there to risk their lives fighting Castro’s troops, not the US military.

The failure of those two operations, along with the lack of real secrecy about the operation and the CIA’s refusal to take advantage of Cuban Army Commander Almeida’s offer, primarily caused the Bay of Pigs disaster. JFK publicly took responsibility, but privately
he was furious. Internal investigations followed, though they would not uncover the CIA–Mafia plots, the fake Guantánamo attack, or Commander Almeida’s offers. However, CIA Director Dulles and his second-in-command were eventually forced to resign.

Even so, the CIA—and possibly Johnny Rosselli and E. Howard Hunt—did manage one success in the weeks following the Bay of Pigs disaster, though it was one the Agency couldn’t boast about. On May 30, 1961, Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, died in a spectacular gangland-style slaying in his car—a hit carried out the same way the CIA had originally wanted the Mafia to kill Fidel. Years later Trujillo’s security chief claimed that Hunt and Johnny Rosselli had been involved. The Church Committee would conclude in 1975 that the CIA’s involvement in the actual assassination was limited to the fact that “CIA-supplied weapons may have been used.” However, the earlier-noted information about Johnny Rosselli and E. Howard Hunt’s joint mission to the Dominican Republic, along with other CIA information about the two, had been withheld from that Committee. Years later, after Watergate, Frank Fiorini—tired of the CIA’s spin that Hunt was a minor, bumbling CIA figure—said in a published interview that “Howard [Hunt] was in charge of other CIA operations involving ‘disposal’ [assassination] and . . . some of them worked.”

Surprisingly—or perhaps because of the success of Trujillo’s assassination—the CIA–Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel continued even after the Bay of Pigs, with Trafficante, Rosselli, Varona, and others continuing their roles.

DURING THE BAY of Pigs disaster and the run-up to Trujillo’s assassination, Carlos Marcello continued his ordeal in Central America. As Marcello explained to Jack Van Laningham, “the governments of
these countries did not want Marcello and he was forced to move on to another country. [Marcello] said that he spent thousands as payola [to government officials], but when the money ran out he would have to move on.”

In Honduras, Marcello—nursing his three broken ribs—barely managed the seventeen-mile trek to a tiny village and another slog through the jungle before finally reaching a small airport.

Carlos Marcello explained to Van Laningham that he was eventually able to buy “new papers in Guatemala and returned to the US through Florida.” The FBI was fairly certain Marcello had been flown to Miami on a Dominican air force jet. An FBI memo later uncovered by John Davis suggests that “a high-ranking US government official may have intervened with the Dominican Republic on Marcello’s behalf,” identifying a key player as “Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, who had received financial aid from Marcello, [and who] had been very much concerned with the Marcello deportation.” Long would later serve on the Warren Commission.

Marcello still had to regain the relative safety of Louisiana, and a Border Patrol report says that pilot David Ferrie was involved in Marcello’s return. (The godfather’s huge Churchill Farms estate reportedly had its own private airstrip.) Marcello told Van Laningham that “he hid out for a long time and moved around, so he could not get caught. He finally turned himself in and was placed in a camp in Brownsville. His attorneys fought the case in court and he was allowed to stay.” Marcello returned home and resumed running his vast criminal empire from his office at the Town and Country Motel.

THROUGH THE REST of 1961 and into 1962, Carlos Marcello’s associates Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli continued to work for the
CIA on the Agency’s plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, though President Kennedy remained unaware of them. CIA officer William Harvey was now running the Castro assassination operation. Agency files confirm that Harvey was still in charge of the CIA’s broader “executive action” assassination program code-named ZR/RIFLE. That program continued to employ assets such as QJWIN, the European assassin recruiter linked to narcotics trafficking.

On November 19, 1961, JFK finally replaced CIA Director Allen Dulles with John McCone, the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission. However, when McCone joined the Agency, no one told him about the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel—either that they had occurred or that they were continuing. In December 1961, within weeks of assuming office, McCone decided to make Richard Helms his new Deputy Director for Plans, though Helms did not officially assume that position until February 1, 1962. The Deputy Director for Plans was essentially the highest operational position in the CIA, with higher posts like Director being concerned more with administrative and political tasks. Richard Helms had no documented taint from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, though an unconfirmed report from noted CBS reporter Daniel Schorr linked him to the start of the 1960 CIA–Mafia plots. That may be why Helms wouldn’t tell McCone about his use of the Mafia even when Helms began to expand the plots. To a later Senate committee, John McCone “testified that he was not briefed about the assassination plots by Dulles, Bissell, Helms, or anyone else,” something Helms confirmed in his own testimony. Also kept in the dark about the plots’ continuation were President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

In working with William Harvey on the plots, Helms wanted him to focus on just Johnny Rosselli, easing Trafficante, Giancana, and the
others out of the operation. However, the Mafia doesn’t work that way, and there are plenty of indications that the other mob bosses—including Carlos Marcello—remained active in the CIA–Mafia plots into the fall of 1963. Those plots would play a central role in helping Marcello and his partners kill JFK in a way that would force high CIA officials such as Richard Helms to cover up crucial information after JFK’s assassination.

Apparently no longer involved in the CIA–Mafia plots was E. Howard Hunt, a protégé of Richard Helms. However, Bernard Barker remained Hunt’s assistant—in addition to fulfilling other Miami-based CIA duties—and Barker also continued his work for Santo Trafficante.

IN 1962, A problem with the CIA–Mafia plots finally brought their existence to the attention of President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. However, neither man was told that the plots were continuing. An FBI memo confirms that in the spring of 1962, Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department had to suppress the prosecution of an associate of Chicago mobster Richard Cain, who had been wiretapping a Las Vegas comedian back in October 1960 to learn if the comedian was having a relationship with “Phyllis McGuire, girl friend of top hoodlum Sam Giancana.” The prosecution of Cain’s associate had to be suppressed to avoid exposing the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Castro, which meant that RFK would have to be told something about the plots.

On May 7, 1962, the CIA’s General Counsel and the Agency’s Director of Security told an angry Robert Kennedy about the CIA–Mafia plots from October 1960 to the Bay of Pigs and even into early 1962. However, the two assured RFK that the plots had been stopped. There are indications that a year earlier, RFK had learned in general
terms about the CIA’s use of Giancana in some capacity during the Bay of Pigs, but it’s unclear whether he knew that Giancana was involved in assassinations or thought he was just helping to provide intelligence. In any event, the CIA admits that RFK was not told the plots were continuing even after he was assured they were over.

With lawyerly understatement, the CIA’s General Counsel, Lawrence Houston, later testified, “If you have seen Mr. Kennedy’s eyes get steely and his jaw set and his voice get low and precise, you get a definite feeling of unhappiness.” A frustrated Robert Kennedy said that because of the CIA, “It would be very difficult to initiate any prosecution against Giancana, as Giancana would immediately bring out the fact the US Government had approached him to arrange for the assassination of Castro.” That was a serious matter for Robert Kennedy, since the Chicago Mafia had been a particular target of his ever-increasing war against organized crime, along with Trafficante’s empire in Florida and Marcello’s organization in Louisiana.

As Robert Kennedy faced the two CIA men in his office on May 7, 1962, he demanded that they check with him first if the CIA ever decided to work with the Mafia again. They passed the message along to Richard Helms, who ignored it and continued to have William Harvey work with Johnny Rosselli and exile leader Tony Varona. The CIA has admitted that in June 1962 Rosselli told Harvey that Varona had sent a three-man assassination team into Cuba.

Also in the spring of 1962, Marcello and his Mafia partner lost two other potential methods of influencing or pressuring JFK to back off on his war on organized crime. The relationship between Sam Giancana and Frank Sinatra became so close that JFK decided to terminate his friendship with Sinatra. The singer had been an enthusiastic supporter of JFK. The FBI—now wire-tapping mobsters because of
pressure from RFK—had even recorded one Mafioso talking about Sinatra’s fruitless attempt to persuade JFK to ease up on the mob.

In 1960 Sinatra had also introduced JFK to Judith Campbell, who later became his mistress. Shortly before JFK ended his friendship with Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover sent “a top-secret memorandum to” Robert Kennedy “that summarized Judith Campbell’s telephone contact with the President as well as her association with Sam Giancana. A copy of the memo also went to a top JFK aide, with a cover note: ‘I thought you would be interested in learning of the following information which was developed in connection with the investigation of John Rosselli.’”
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This event led to “Hoover’s lunch with the President on March 22, [1962],” which a JFK aide described as “bitter” and “which went on for no less than four hours.” According to historian Richard Mahoney, “the concession the [FBI] Director sought was confirmation in his post as head of the FBI.” I interviewed Courtney Evans, the FBI liaison between Hoover’s FBI and RFK, and he confirmed details of the strained relationship between RFK and the FBI Director. RFK wanted Hoover to be replaced or forced to retire when he met the mandatory federal retirement age, which was rapidly approaching. But because of Campbell, JFK was in no position to force Hoover to leave. By the following year, Hoover had received from JFK the confirmation he sought, leaving him secure as FBI Director even if JFK served a second term.

The fact that President Kennedy ended his relationships with two of Johnny Rosselli’s close friends was a critical blow to Marcello and Trafficante. Campbell and Sinatra had potentially represented ways
that John or Robert Kennedy might have been pressured—or blackmailed—to back off from their massive assault on the Mafia. Now the mob bosses had few options to stop the Kennedys’ ever-increasing pressure on them.

Even before RFK and JFK began to learn of the CIA–Mafia plots, the Kennedy brothers had developed their own effort to topple Fidel Castro. “Operation Mongoose” is well-known today, though its one-year existence remained largely secret for more than a decade, until Congressional investigations of the mid-1970s. Not willing to trust a CIA official to oversee the operation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Kennedys instead picked General Edward Lansdale, fresh from the Vietnam conflict. Operation Mongoose was in some ways a joint CIA–U.S. military effort, though by far the lion’s share of the operation fell under CIA control. By early 1962, “the CIA station in Miami [had] quickly expanded into the world’s largest [with] six hundred case officers and as many as three thousand contract agents,” according to Helms biographer Thomas Powers.

Operation Mongoose was a loose collection of actions directed at Cuba, including support for exile groups, sabotage, and plans for military action. As an outsider, Lansdale was not part of Richard Helms’s ongoing CIA–Mafia plots, and neither was CIA Director John McCone.

In addition to the assassination team sent in by Johnny Rosselli and Tony Varona mentioned earlier, in the summer of 1962 the CIA resumed contact with Rolando Cubela, the disgruntled mid-level Cuban official the Agency had first dealt with regarding an assassination plot a year and a half earlier. Cubela made no progress in 1962, but in 1963 the CIA would once again ask for his help in assassinating Fidel. These contacts always seemed to coincide with developments in
the CIA–Mafia plots, which—along with Cubela’s ties to Trafficante’s associates—indicates that in many ways they were simply another aspect of the CIA–Mafia plots.

In the early days of Mongoose, US military leaders proposed a bizarre array of actions the United States could take against Cuba. Declassified only in the 1990s, one proposed action was code-named Operation Northwoods. ABC News reported the Joint Chiefs’ startling Northwoods operation as a proposal “to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in US cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.” The proposal included “blowing up a US ship and even orchestrating violent terrorism in US cities . . . to trick the American public . . . into supporting a war to oust . . . Fidel Castro.” One plan in the declassified Northwoods files stated, “We could blow up a US ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba.”

Operation Northwoods actually offered two options for false Guantánamo attacks, another being to “pay someone in the Castro government to attack US forces at the Guantánamo Naval Base.” Neither President Kennedy, the CIA’s Inspector General, nor JFK’s new CIA Director had ever learned about the CIA’s fake Guantánamo attack planned for the Bay of Pigs. The inclusion of a similar idea in the Joint Chiefs’ Northwoods proposal in 1962 suggests that the head of the Joint Chiefs in the spring of 1962—General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who’d had that same position in 1961—had been a witting participant in the CIA’s original Guantánamo provocation. From a practical point of view this makes sense, so the fake CIA attack could have been coordinated with the US military at a high level.