The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (28 page)

The CIA files of the European criminal assassins that QJWIN tried to recruit—especially those with last names beginning with “M”—are all heavily censored. Santo Trafficante’s French Connection heroin associate Michel Victor Mertz has two dozen parallels with QJWIN. Mertz could have been recruited by QJWIN, and/or it would have been easy for Mertz to have assumed QJWIN’s role or clandestine identity. As detailed in an upcoming chapter, declassified files show that Mertz was deported from Dallas soon after JFK’s murder, and other evidence implicates him in the crime.

Michel Victor Mertz is a little-known but important figure in the JFK plot due to his long ties to Trafficante and Marcello’s heroin network. It was Mertz who perfected the technique of smuggling heroin hidden in cars on ocean liners, as depicted in the award-winning film
The French Connection
. Though Mertz was a deadly assassin, he also had ties to French intelligence (the SDECE) and had saved the life of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1961 after infiltrating an anti–de Gaulle group by getting into a fistfight while pretending to be against de Gaulle. Mertz was considered “untouchable” by French authorities, and he often visited America. He made a trip to Louisiana in 1963 using the alias of an anti–de Gaulle activist who’d had contact with the CIA.

In addition to QJWIN and the Cubela portions of the CIA–Mafia plots, Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli continued their connections to the Castro assassination plots, though only Rosselli was supposed to be involved. Historians have questioned how much of the mob bosses’ efforts were really directed at Fidel—and how much those same efforts were part of their plan to kill JFK remains a question. For example, historian Richard Mahoney concluded that “under the CIA penumbra, Rosselli could move guns and assassins in relative secrecy. All experienced murderers seek cover. By putting the Agency’s fingerprints on [Mafia] operations, the mob could anticipate that the CIA would [be forced to] cooperate in the cover-up” of crucial information related to JFK’s assassination.

Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli could meet to discuss their plan to assassinate JFK, safe from law-enforcement surveillance. While Marcello was under pressure from RFK’s Justice Department, the New Orleans FBI agent in charge of Marcello claimed the godfather was merely a lowly “tomato salesman” who was not involved in organized crime.
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Marcello was not bugged or wiretapped—or closely monitored by the local FBI—so Trafficante felt comfortable visiting him in New Orleans. In 1963 Johnny Rosselli visited New Orleans and met with Guy Banister, according to one of Banister’s secretaries. Mafia protocol makes it almost certain that Mafia don Rosselli also met with Marcello. In addition, Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli sometimes met at a secluded resort outside Tampa, the Safety Harbor Spa, whose exclusive clientele and distinctive staff freed the mob bosses from any possibility of law-enforcement surveillance.

As a corollary to RFK’s pressure on Rosselli’s boss Sam Giancana, the FBI monitored Rosselli’s movements—except when he was on CIA business in Florida. While FBI surveillance reports for Rosselli exist for other times and places, no surveillance reports for his time in Florida in 1963 have yet been released—if they still exist.

One reason for the missing records might be Johnny Rosselli’s meetings with Jack Ruby in Miami in late September and early October 1963. Investigative journalist Scott Malone confirmed that “Ruby met secretly with Johnny Rosselli in Miami” on two occasions in that time span. Malone says that “Rosselli was under FBI surveillance” part of the time, and “an FBI agent familiar with the case says that Rosselli was indeed in Miami when the meetings with Ruby are supposed to have occurred” and that “investigators were able to identify the exact motel rooms [where] the meetings occurred.” When Congressional investigator Michael Ewing wrote a meticulously detailed nine-page analysis of Scott Malone’s six-page article after it was released—noting anything even slightly in error—he pointed out no problems with the article’s description of the fall 1963 Ruby–Rosselli meetings in Miami.

Notorious Chicago hit man Charles Nicoletti, another member of Rosselli’s Mafia family, also joined the CIA–Mafia plots in the fall of 1963, according to the
Miami Herald
and United Press International. A Senate hearing had exposed Nicoletti’s 1962 arrest in a specially modified vehicle that the press called a “hit car” and that had “a hidden compartment [behind] the front seat [that was] fitted with brackets to hold shotguns and rifles [and was so large] that a machine gun could be secreted in the compartment.” Cuban officials and unconfirmed US accounts say that Nicoletti also became part of the mob’s
plan to kill JFK, as did Herminio Diaz, another mob hit man who worked for Santo Trafficante.
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Diaz had recently left Cuba to join Trafficante in Florida. Cuban authorities described him as “a hit man” since the 1940s who had tried to assassinate the President of Costa Rica in 1956. In 1963 Diaz began working on the CIA–Mafia plots for Trafficante and was also of great interest to David Morales’s supervisor, Miami CIA Station Chief Ted Shackley. The CIA was especially interested in Diaz because in his first interview in the United States with David Morales’s Cuban exile agents, Diaz mentioned Juan Almeida and Rolando Cubela as part of a group of disgruntled Cuban officials who wanted to act against Castro. Diaz had probably acquired the information second- or third-hand from Trafficante (or Bernard Barker), but even though Diaz got some of the details wrong, his mention of Almeida and Cubela was enough to get the CIA’s attention. Despite another CIA asset’s comment that Diaz was “fond of gambling and capable of committing any crime for money,” the CIA considered using Diaz as an “agent candidate or . . . asset.”

It was important for the success of the mob bosses’ plot to kill JFK that the trusted men they brought into the plan—Diaz, Charles Nicoletti, Michel Victor Mertz, and John Martino—all had intelligence ties. That gave them cover for their work on the plot, plus ways to feed disinformation to the agencies they worked for, before and after JFK’s murder. The bosses knew that the agencies might also be reluctant to investigate their own assets, especially when there was someone else who could be blamed.

Carlos Marcello was also still involved in the CIA–Mafia plots in the summer and fall of 1963. Historian Dr. David Kaiser wrote that “Marcello had been involved in the CIA–mafia plot against Castro from the very beginning” and was still working on it into the summer of 1963. At that time, another detective working for Marcello, Sam Benton, assisted in the CIA–Mafia plots in both Louisiana and Miami.

Marcello was also backing Cuban exile groups. The main exile group the godfather supported was the New Orleans branch of Tony Varona’s Cuban Revolutionary Council, which also involved David Ferrie. The Cuban Revolutionary Council had originally been organized by E. Howard Hunt with the assistance of Bernard Barker.

Varona, Hunt, and Barker were now working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan with Harry Williams while also continuing to work on the CIA–Mafia plots. It’s easy to see how the lines become blurred between the covert Cuban operations that JFK and the CIA Director had authorized and the unauthorized operations Richard Helms was hiding from them. Helms may not have minded the crossover—he might have even welcomed it—since it gave him cover if problems arose with his unauthorized operations. It was probably also easier for him to manage the operations by using some of the same personnel, such as Morales, FitzGerald, Barker, Artime, and Cubela, on both the authorized and unauthorized activities.

Unfortunately, that also gave the mob bosses access to potentially compromise each exile component of the JFK–Almeida coup plan. In addition to Harry Williams, the exiles leaders the Kennedys wanted for their operation were Artime, Varona, Manolo Ray, and Eloy Menoyo.
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The mob bosses attempted to link each to either the CIA–Mafia plots or to Lee Oswald in the summer and fall of 1963, and they often succeeded.

The Mafia’s effort to intimidate, buy off, or kill Harry Williams began in the summer of 1963. Kennedy aides and Robert Kennedy’s phone logs agree that Harry Williams sometimes stayed at Robert Kennedy’s New York apartment, as Williams undertook extensive travels for RFK. On one occasion in 1963, former death squad leader Rolando Masferrer—accompanied by two thugs described as looking like Mafia “torpedoes”—confronted Williams there. Masferrer was an associate of both Santo Trafficante and John Martino. Masferrer insisted on joining Williams’s operation, but knowing the Kennedys had banned Masferrer from receiving US backing, Williams refused to be intimidated. Masferrer left.

Next Trafficante tried to bribe Williams. Bernard Barker had apparently arranged for Williams to meet with the CIA security officer for the JFK–Almeida coup plan at a Miami restaurant. During the meeting, the CIA officer excused himself and Williams was called over to the table of Santo Trafficante, who offered Williams a bribe. Williams declined, and when the CIA officer returned, the Agency man made no mention of Trafficante or the bribe.

Since Williams resisted intimidation and bribery, Trafficante tried one final approach. Later in the summer of 1963, Williams traveled to Guatemala City to confer with Manuel Artime, a trip that Barker had also likely helped arrange. While Williams dined at a restaurant the night before the scheduled meeting, two gunmen attacked him. He barely escaped after shooting one of them. Back in his hotel, Williams immediately called RFK. The Attorney General told him to leave the country as soon as possible. It’s important to note that Williams was in touch with the FBI before and after the incident (Bureau agents had warned Williams to be careful, which is why he was carrying a pistol), but Williams’s FBI file—like his CIA file—has never been released. The
few memos about Williams released in other documents prove that his FBI and CIA files in 1963 alone would have been quite extensive given the high-profile people he met with.

As mentioned earlier, a summer 1963 CIA memo says that exile leader Tony Varona was bribed with $200,000 (more than $1 million today) from Rosselli’s boss Giancana. The CIA learned of the bribe from Mafia member Richard Cain, who had been involved in the CIA–Mafia plots since 1960. After bugging a Communist embassy in Mexico City the previous year, Cain began working for the CIA as an asset in the summer of 1963, while he was also Chief Investigator for the Chicago/Cook County Sheriff. CIA memos later withheld from Congressional investigators show that Cain’s information about Tony Varona traveled via an unusually secure channel directly to Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA official working closely with Richard Helms. That secure channel to FitzGerald and Helms would also soon be used to convey troubling information about Lee Oswald.

However, at the time of Varona’s bribe, perhaps CIA officials like Helms saw nothing wrong with the payment, since Varona, Giancana, and Cain had all been working for the CIA on the CIA–Mafia plots. But after JFK’s murder, Varona’s Mafia bribe would be yet another explosive piece of information that Helms would have to hide from his own CIA Director. The Agency also had in its files incriminating remarks Varona made to former death squad leader Rolando Masferrer just weeks after Varona received his $200,000 bribe. In the late summer of 1963, Varona ominously told Masferrer that he would help remove certain “obstacles” preventing Masferrer from getting US backing, something possible only if JFK was no longer President.

Manuel Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s good friend, was called by some exiles the CIA’s “golden boy.” His part of the JFK–Almeida coup
plan was so important that the CIA assigned it a separate code-name, AMWORLD, and its own supersecure communications network at the Miami CIA station. Congressional investigators later documented the lavish support the CIA gave Artime: “four bases, two in Costa Rica and two in Nicaragua,” with “two large ships, eight small vessels, two speed boats, three planes, and more than 200 tons of weapons and armaments and about $250,000 in electronic equipment.”

Unlike Varona, Artime was probably not a knowing participant in the plan to kill JFK. In the late 1970s, shortly before Artime’s death, Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi received information that Artime had “guilty knowledge” of the crime, but that could have come after JFK’s murder. Artime received so much support from the CIA and the Kennedys—and was slated for such a major role in Cuba if the coup succeeded—that he would seem to have nothing to gain by helping kill JFK before the coup. However, CIA files withheld from Congress make it clear that not only was Artime working on the CIA–Mafia plots but the CIA looked at using the Mafia to provide cover for all the weapons it was providing to Artime. Those Agency memos also show that the CIA was well aware of the talk of Mafia activity that swirled around Artime.

Artime’s operations were further compromised when they were linked to Lee Oswald. In the summer of 1963, David Ferrie reportedly took Oswald to a small training camp outside of New Orleans that supplied recruits for Artime’s camps in Central America.

The Mafia would also try to compromise liberal exile leader Manolo Ray, whose reputation for integrity seemed to render him incorruptible. Trafficante and Marcello’s men thus took an indirect approach to tie Lee Oswald to Ray and his exile group. In the late summer of 1963, Oswald appears to have made an unusual visit to
Silvia Odio, a female member of Ray’s group in Dallas. Odio’s father was in prison in Cuba because of a Castro assassination attempt by Alpha 66’s Antonio Veciana. With no advance notice, an American and two Cuban exiles appeared at the door of Odio’s Dallas apartment. The American was introduced to her as “Leon Oswald.” Both Odio and her sister saw the three men. The day after the unusual visit, one of the exiles phoned Odio to make the provocative claim that Oswald was a former Marine, an expert marksman who said the exiles “should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.”

More than two months later, after the JFK assassination, both Silvia Odio and her sister recognized Oswald during TV coverage. Gaeton Fonzi extensively investigated and documented the Oswald–Odio meeting, finding Odio and her sister’s account very credible. The provocative visit appears to have been engineered with the assistance of two Trafficante associates: John Martino, who’d met Odio’s sister in Dallas, and Rolando Masferrer, whose brother lived in Odio’s apartment complex. It was another example of explosive information—information that would cause problems for investigators and intelligence agencies when it surfaced—being planted months before JFK’s murder. Indeed, Odio’s story would cause major last-minute problems for the Warren Commission, until an associate of Trafficante—Loran Hall—indicated that it was he and his friends who made the visit, not Oswald. However, after the
Warren Report
was published, Hall denied making the visit.