The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (49 page)

Marcello initially presided over a celebration of his victory. But Davis writes that Marcello left the party and “went to his office at
the Town and Country” Motel, according to one source “looking as if he had something urgent on his mind.” If Marcello didn’t want to face far more serious charges than those he had just escaped, he had important loose ends left to deal with.

In Washington, DC, Harry Williams had returned from lunch to resume his meeting with the CIA officials. According to CIA Director John McCone’s desk calendar, now at the National Archives, McCone had lunch that day, starting at 1:00 p.m. (EST), with Richard Helms, Lyman Kirkpatrick, and two other officials. By the time Williams’s meeting resumed, everyone had heard that JFK had been shot. Williams told me that the highest official at the meeting at this time, apparently Lyman Kirkpatrick, began eyeing him with suspicion, as if some aspect of JFK’s death made the CIA official think a Cuban exile was involved. Williams said he was trying to play it cool, but he felt that perhaps Kirkpatrick took his demeanor the wrong way. Within minutes, the meeting broke up with all plans on hold, and Williams returned to his room at Washington’s Ebbitt Hotel.

SOMEONE IN THE Presidential party in Dallas called Robert Kennedy at his Hickory Hill estate in Virginia, to tell him his brother was dead. That was followed by a flood of calls—from Lyndon Johnson, Hoover, and others—over the four phones in RFK’s large house. According to Richard Mahoney, while taking a break from the flurry of calls, Bobby confided to his press secretary Ed Guthman that “I thought they’d get one of us, but . . . I thought it would be me.” Robert was apparently referring to the Mafia.

While CIA Director John McCone was en route to the estate, RFK made an intriguing call to CIA headquarters, according to
journalists George Bailey and Seymour Freidin. (Freidin was the
New York Herald-Tribune’s
foreign-affairs editor, later revealed by Jack Anderson to have been a paid CIA informant in the 1960s.) Freidin said that RFK spoke to a high-level CIA official at headquarters about the shooting of JFK and demanded to know: “Did your outfit have anything to do with this horror?”

After John McCone arrived at RFK’s estate, probably between 2:45 and 3:00 (EST), Mahoney writes that Robert “went out on the lawn with him. ‘I asked McCone,’ Kennedy was to tell his trusted aide Walter Sheridan, ‘if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me and [McCone said] they hadn’t. ’” Mahoney points out that “McCone was one of Bobby’s closest friends in the Administration, and this extraordinary question revealed a deep and terrible suspicion about the CIA, something born of some knowledge, or at least intuition, and not simply the incontinence of grief.” Of course, neither McCone or RFK knew about the ongoing CIA–Mafia plots, or the assassination side of the Cubela (AMLASH) and QJWIN operations. RFK’s question likely referred to some aspect of the JFK–Almeida coup plan that both men knew about, particularly the AMWORLD portion with exile leader Manuel Artime. Not long after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. notes, CIA Director McCone told RFK that “he thought there were two people involved in the shooting.”

By 5:00 (EST), McCone was back at CIA Headquarters, meeting with officials who knew about the JFK–Almeida coup plan, including Richard Helms and Lyman Kirkpatrick. Helms told neither man that he had continued the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel, or that a CIA officer had been meeting with Roland Cubela about Fidel’s assassination at the very moment that JFK was shot.

IN PARIS, THAT CIA case officer had been meeting with Rolando Cubela (AMLASH). They had discussed Cubela’s being provided with several items, including “two high-powered rifles with telescopic sights.” According to the Church Committee, the case officer “tells AMLASH the explosives and rifles with telescopic sights will be provided. The case officer also offers AMLASH the poison pen device but AMLASH is dissatisfied with it. As the meeting breaks up, they are told President Kennedy has been assassinated.”

IN HAVANA, FRENCH journalist Jean Daniel was having lunch with Fidel Castro, discussing JFK’s proposal for talks between the two countries. When Castro was informed of Kennedy’s death, he said three times, “This is very bad.” (Other accounts have Castro saying “This is very bad news.”)

IN MIAMI, JIMMY Hoffa called Frank Ragano, the attorney he shared with Trafficante, and gloated over the assassination of JFK. However, Hoffa’s mood changed after he got a call from a Teamster official in Washington. Hoffa was furious that two Teamster leaders at the union’s Washington headquarters had closed the office, lowered its flag to half-mast, and sent condolences to the President’s widow. Hoffa yelled at his secretary for crying, hung up on the people in Washington, and left the building. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, FBI reports say a Teamster organizer told the Secretary-Treasurer of the local Teamsters Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union “We killed Kennedy.” The Teamster organizer was an associate of Frank Chavez, a deadly henchman for Jimmy Hoffa. FBI reports also linked Chavez to Jack Ruby, and Chavez would later make a documented attempt to kill Robert Kennedy.

SHORTLY BEFORE 4:00 p.m. (EST) in Washington, DC, reporter Haynes Johnson had joined Harry Williams in his room at the Ebbitt Hotel. Williams had been helping Johnson with his forthcoming book on the Bay of Pigs. Haynes was also working closely with Manuel Artime on the book, even though at the time there was friction between Artime and Williams. Though Haynes was friends with both RFK and Williams, the journalist hadn’t been told about the JFK–Almeida coup plan. In the hotel room, Williams was on the phone with Robert Kennedy, who told him that the JFK–Almeida coup plan was now on hold, so Williams wouldn’t be leaving for Guantánamo the next day. Hearing that Haynes was also in the room, RFK then asked to speak to him, since he was also a friend of RFK’s. As Haynes later wrote in a 1983
Washington Post
article, Robert “was utterly in control of his emotions when he came on the line and sounded almost studiedly brisk as he said: ‘One of your guys did it.’” Haynes didn’t mention RFK’s comment to Harry, and RFK never said anything about it—or said anything similar—to Williams.

It’s important to stress that both Haynes Johnson and Williams agree that RFK said, “One of your guys did it”—killed JFK—to Haynes, not to Williams. Haynes confirmed that to me in 1992, and again in May 2007, and it’s in his detailed 1983
Washington Post
article. Williams said RFK never voiced any suspicion like that to him on that day or any other. A close Kennedy associate—who knew RFK, Haynes, and Williams—backed up Williams’s statement.

Though historian Richard Mahoney didn’t know about the JFK–Almeida coup plan when he wrote his 1999 book, he perceptively wrote that RFK’s comment to Haynes Johnson “clearly was referring to embittered Cubans deployed by elements in the CIA” who might have been “acting at a deniable distance.” The evidence indicates that
RFK’s comment related to Manuel Artime’s operations, which we now know had ties to associates of Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli. That would also explain why RFK would make the “your guys” comment to Haynes and not Williams, due to the friction that had developed between Williams and Artime.

Haynes Johnson would later write that within a year or so after JFK’s death, he heard that Artime was involved in the drug trade, something that was later confirmed by US officials. In addition, Haynes also wrote about one of Artime’s protégés during Watergate, who became a major Miami drug lord when Trafficante was still powerful there.

AT 4:01 P.M. (EST) on November 22, 1963—only an hour after Oswald’s arrival at Dallas Police headquarters, and just ten minutes after J. Edgar Hoover learned Oswald’s name—Hoover called Robert Kennedy and was able to tell him he “thought we had the man who killed the President,” and that Oswald was “not a communist.” Hoover probably knew the latter because the FBI had assisted Naval Intelligence with its tight surveillance on Oswald. This information almost slipped out right after the assassination, when James Hosty, the Dallas FBI agent assigned to Oswald, allegedly told Dallas Police “officer Jack Revill on November 22 . . . that Oswald . . . had been under observation. When Revill protested that the information had not been shared with the Dallas Police, he was reminded of the FBI policy forbidding the sharing of information pertaining to espionage.”

AT 7:00 P.M. (EST), NBC news anchor Chet Huntley introduced the audio portion of Oswald’s August 21, 1963, interview with WDSU-TV in New Orleans. By 7:43, NBC was running the video portion of the interview as well, allowing millions of viewers to see and hear Oswald
state, “I would definitely say that I am a Marxist” and then outlining the aims of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. For many people, those comments cinched Oswald’s guilt.

LIKE CARLOS MARCELLO, Santo Trafficante had a documented celebration the day that JFK was assassinated. Trafficante had earlier arranged to meet his lawyer, Frank Ragano, and Ragano’s girlfriend—Nancy Young (later Ragano)—for dinner at Tampa’s International Inn. JFK had delivered a speech there just four days earlier, and the irony was not lost on Trafficante or Ragano, who realized that in “the same hotel lobby I was crossing to meet Santo, Kennedy had shaken hands and waved at admirers” earlier that week.

Ragano found the normally crowded restaurant almost empty that Friday night. He says that “[a] smiling Santo greeted me at our table. ‘Isn’t that something, they killed the son-of-a-bitch,’ he said, hugging and kissing me on the cheeks. ‘The son-of-a-bitch is dead.’” Ragano noted that Trafficante’s “generally bland face was wreathed in joy.” As Trafficante drank Chivas Regal, he proclaimed, “This is like lifting a load of stones off my shoulders . . . now they’ll get off my back, off Carlos’s back, and off [Hoffa’s] back. We’ll make big money out of this and maybe go back into Cuba. I’m glad for [Hoffa’s] sake because [Lyndon] Johnson is sure as hell going to remove Bobby. I don’t see how he’ll keep him in office.” Ragano said that Trafficante “talked more excitedly than usual and it was unclear to me what he meant about returning to Cuba.” Ragano didn’t realize that Trafficante knew about the JFK–Almeida coup plan and that the US government had been making plans to invade Cuba for months.

After a Trafficante toast, Ragano’s girlfriend arrived. Ragano says that “when her drink came, Santo and I raised our glasses again
and Santo said merrily, ‘For a hundred years of health and to John Kennedy’s death.’” Then, Trafficante “started laughing” and began another toast. Horrified by the public spectacle, Ragano’s girlfriend “banged her glass on the table and rushed out of the restaurant.” Ragano stayed with the “jubilant” Trafficante, who “continued toasting in Sicilian to the bountiful times he was certain were coming.”

Information uncovered after Ragano’s death suggests why he might have toasted the President’s death so heartily: Ragano may have had a small part in the payoff for the JFK hit. According to FBI reports, “in December 1963” an FBI source “witnessed a meeting between Santo Trafficante, Frank Ragano,” and another Tampa mobster. The three argued over briefcases of money, with the mobster telling Trafficante the money was short by $200,000 because of the payoff the mobster had already made to the two men who killed JFK. The source was a prison inmate who sent a letter to an Assistant US Attorney in 1992, who then forwarded it to the FBI. The mobster he named was a business partner of one of Trafficante’s closest relatives. Also, the club in Tampa where the source said the meeting occurred was well known for being linked to the Mafia. Confirmation for the meeting comes from the FBI file, which says that independent of the inmate, the FBI “had already received information regarding an incident similar to that reported by” the inmate.

AROUND 5:15 P.M. (EST), J. Edgar Hoover issued an internal memo stating that police “very probably” had Kennedy’s killer in custody, calling Oswald a nut and a pro-Castro extremist, an “extreme radical of the left.” Hoover soon began to exert pressure on senior FBI officials to complete their investigation and issue a factual report supporting the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. Though it
wasn’t a federal offense for one person acting alone to kill a president, it WAS a federal offense for two or more people to conspire to “injure any officer of the US engaged in discharging the duties of his office.” Thus, proclaiming Oswald the “lone assassin” kept it a local and not a federal prosecution—and kept it out of the hands of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department.

Hoover’s early decision to pronounce Oswald a lone assassin—even before JFK’s autopsy—no doubt signaled to many agents in the field how their investigation should proceed. There was a shift from agents pursuing every lead vigorously, to focusing on Oswald’s guilt and claiming he had acted alone. In addition, because of the quick decision that there wasn’t a conspiracy, there was no large manhunt in Dallas for other conspirators. Roads and airports weren’t closed, making escaping the city far less difficult for those involved in the assassination. There are unconfirmed reports of various private planes taking off from small airports around Dallas, particularly Redbird, but nothing conclusive.

HOWEVER, IN NEW Orleans, the conspiracy would soon start to unravel. The mood at Guy Banister’s office had been joyous earlier on November 22. Though his temporary secretary said Banister wasn’t there “at all that day,” she said that Banister’s mistress, Delphine Roberts, was in the office. Roberts “received a call to inform her that the President was assassinated and to turn on the TV. When Roberts turned on the TV, she jumped with joy and said ‘I am glad.’”

After the secretary left, that evening Banister finally made it in to the office after visiting a neighborhood bar. He was preceded by Jack Martin, a private-detective associate and drinking buddy of Banister’s. According to Delphine Roberts, Martin arrived first and went to a
filing cabinet. Banister soon entered and accused Martin of stealing files. They argued, and Martin yelled, “What are you going to do—kill me, like you all did Kennedy?” Banister then pulled out a pistol and struck Martin on the head several times, causing him to bleed. Martin later called an assistant District Attorney to say that Ferrie was a longtime colleague and tutor of Lee Oswald. Since Martin had fallen out with Ferrie over a fraudulent ecclesiastical order (the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of North America) and was an alcoholic, there was some doubt at the time about his reliability. But Martin’s actions would set off a chain of events that led to Ferrie’s arrest by Monday, November 25.