The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (54 page)

IN SOUTH CAROLINA on November 24, white supremacist and Banister associate Joseph Milteer was having breakfast with his friend William Somersett, unaware that Somersett was an informant for the Miami police. Earlier, Milteer had told Somersett that “Oswald hasn’t said anything and he will not say anything.” Milteer also made it clear that, despite the initial reports of Oswald’s stay in Russia and his seeming public support of Fidel Castro, “Oswald was not connected with Moscow, or any big Communist leaders.” When the subject of JFK’s murder came up again, “Milteer advised that they did not have to worry about Lee Harvey Oswald getting caught because he ‘doesn’t know anything.’”

However, as if he needed to make sure, Milteer excused himself so that he could telephone someone.

ON THE MORNING of November 24 in Dallas, Jack Ruby was spruced up, dressed in his finest, ready for the spotlight he was sure to occupy after he completed his assignment for Carlos Marcello. Ruby was undoubtedly nervous, but not about the length of time he might have to spend in jail after shooting Oswald. Under Texas law, for murders involving a “sudden passion,” the sentence could be as brief as two years, with time off for good behavior, or sometimes even just probation, with no prison time. Instead, Ruby was probably worried only that after he pulled out his gun and started shooting at Oswald, he might hit a policeman or a policeman might start shooting at him. Getting into the police station basement where the transfer would take place would be no problem for Ruby, since the FBI later acknowledged
that “as a result of his friendship with a number of police officers, Ruby had easy accessibility to the Dallas Police Department.”

The executive director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, former Mafia prosecutor G. Robert Blakey, said that “the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby had all the earmarks of an organized crime hit.” The Committee also found that Ruby’s shooting Oswald wasn’t “spontaneous,” and that Ruby probably had help entering the basement of the police station for the transfer. The staffs of both the Committee and the Warren Commission focused particular attention on one of Ruby’s police associates: Blakey “was convinced that Sergeant Patrick Dean had been the one who let Jack Ruby in the basement on the morning of the 24th.”

Sergeant Dean refused to testify to Blakey’s Committee and even told author Peter Dale Scott “of his longtime relationship with [Joe] Civello,” the mobster who ran Dallas for Carlos Marcello. Scott also notes that Dean “was in charge of security in the Dallas basement when Oswald was murdered” and that Dean “later failed a lie detector test about Ruby’s access to [the basement].” Dean also worked in narcotics, which Ruby was also involved in with Civello and Marcello.

As had apparently been planned the night before, at 10:19 a.m. (CST), dancer Karen Carlin in Fort Worth called Ruby’s home, supposedly to ask him to send her money. It’s doubtful that Ruby was there, since an earlier call to Ruby’s home by his regular housekeeper was answered by someone who didn’t seem to recognize her voice. At 10:45 a.m., Ruby was talking to a TV crew in front of the police station, before heading to the Western Union office. At 11:00 a.m., Sergeant Dean apparently removed police who had been guarding an interior door to the basement. Upstairs, in Detective Fritz’s office, a small group of officials were questioning Oswald, but at 11:15 a.m.
they were told their time was up. However, the transfer car wasn’t in position, so the group with Oswald had to slow its passage toward the basement. The basement was packed with at least seventy policemen and forty newsmen.

At Western Union, Ruby wired Carlin the money at 11:17 a.m. and then headed back to the police station, only a block away. The timing was tight for Ruby to have any hope of claiming a “sudden passion” defense, but he had plenty of associates who could signal when he should arrive. For example, only one minute after Ruby left the Western Union office, his attorney entered the police station and saw Oswald coming out of the jail elevator. Ruby’s attorney turned to leave, telling a police detective, “That’s all I wanted to see.”

Even with the crowds of press and police, no one ever claimed to have seen Ruby actually enter the police basement, one more indication that he must have had help in doing so. Ruby most likely entered the basement from the alley that runs between the Western Union office and the police station. One officer claimed to have seen “an unidentified white male” walk down the ramp into the basement, past Officer Roy Vaughn, who was guarding the ramp. But that officer failed a polygraph test, while Officer Vaughn, who consistently said he had not let Ruby down the ramp, passed his polygraph test. Seven witnesses agreed with Vaughn.

AROUND 11:20 A.M., Oswald walked through the door, flanked by two Dallas Police detectives. As soon as he was visible, a car horn blew and is audible on the news broadcast of the transfer. At 11:21, Ruby surged out of the crowd and fired one shot into Oswald’s abdomen. The basement erupted in pandemonium. As Oswald was rushed to Parkland Hospital, the apprehended Ruby appeared to police officer
Don Ray Archer as “being extremely agitated and nervous, continually inquiring whether Oswald was dead or alive.” Oswald died at 1:07 p.m. It was only after Ruby was told that his victim was dead that “Ruby calmed down,” according to Marcello’s biographer, John H. Davis. Davis notes that even after an officer told Ruby, “‘It looks like it’s going to be the electric chair for you’ . . . Ruby immediately relaxed and even managed a wan smile.” Officer Archer said “it seemed at that time that Ruby felt his own life depended on the success of his mission, that if Oswald had not died, he, Jack Ruby, would have been killed.”

Later that day, a Secret Service agent interviewed a “highly agitated” Karen Carlin. She blurted out to the agent that “Oswald, Jack Ruby, and other individuals unknown to her were involved in a plot to assassinate Kennedy, and that she would be killed if she gave any information to authorities.” As Officer Archer had suspected, Ruby had apparently been threatened with death as well, and not just for himself. Ruby would soon be visited in jail by Marcello underboss Joe Campisi Sr. Ruby had last seen Campisi at his restaurant on the night before JFK’s murder. Campisi was also close to Sheriff Bill Decker, in whose custody Ruby would spend most of the rest of his life, reportedly in a cell overlooking Dealey Plaza. When Ruby was later asked in a polygraph examination if “members of your own family are now in danger because of what you did,” Ruby said “yes.” Ruby’s sister later testified that Ruby worried about their “brother Earl being dismembered [and] Earl’s children [being] dismembered [and their] arms and legs . . . cut off.” At the time, a Chicago mobster associate of Richard Cain was well known in the underworld for that type of Mafia retribution; years later, Johnny Rosselli’s legs were cut off after Santo Trafficante had him murdered.

IN SOUTH CAROLINA, Joseph Milteer had completed his phone call and rejoined his friend William Somersett. After the radio broadcast the news about Oswald’s death, Milteer told his friend, “That makes it work perfect . . . now we have no worry.”

NOW THAT LEE Oswald was dead, Carlos Marcello would soon be free from worry. After Oswald’s murder, David Ferrie returned to New Orleans and turned himself in to authorities. The FBI and Secret Service were investigating Jack Martin’s allegations, and the news media had started to get wind not just of Ferrie, but even Marcello, as possibly being involved in JFK’s death. However, Martin was an unstable individual and quickly backed away from his charges, and within forty-eight hours the entire incident had blown over. That was in spite of the fact that Ferrie admitted to the FBI he had “severely criticized” JFK and possibly said “he ought to be shot,” and that he had “been critical of any President riding in an open car” and said that “anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a President.” Ferrie was also able to produce his library card when the agents asked, so he was released and the investigation dropped.

Former FBI supervisor Guy Banister was briefly interviewed by authorities, but not investigated. Statements by the local FBI to the press seemed to place responsibility for the whole incident on District Attorney Jim Garrison. The matter had been staunched before it could become national news, and the press and the authorities would soon forget the whole thing—at least for a few years.

Carlos Marcello had managed to emerge unscathed from the weekend crisis that could have exposed the roles of David Ferrie and Guy Banister in JFK’s murder, and even led to the godfather himself. Marcello knew that Ruby was a long-time mob associate who could
be trusted not to talk. But the godfather realized there were still avenues investigators could pursue that could lead to his associates. So, even as the government continued to scramble to deal with the aftermath of two assassinations—including the national security implications of JFK’s murder and the coup plan that was on hold—Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli implemented plans to keep attention focused away from themselves, and toward Fidel Castro.

CHAPTER 17

Secret Investigations and Getting Away With Murder

I
N THE COMING months and years, Carlos Marcello would have other close calls that could have exposed his role in the assassination; those would continue through the time of his 1985 confession to Jack Van Laningham and its almost deadly aftermath.

MARCELLO AND SANTO Trafficante used two basic strategies to conceal their roles in JFK’s murder, at the time and for years to come. First, along with Johnny Rosselli, the two godfathers continued to exploit their work on the unauthorized CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel, to gain a measure of protection from close scrutiny. Those few CIA officials who knew about the plots would be loathe to look seriously at the possibility that their own operation was somehow involved in JFK’s murder. To do so would cost their own careers, and perhaps even bring themselves and the Agency under suspicion. In addition, parts of the CIA–Mafia plots involving the mob bosses would continue in December 1963 and beyond.

Second, Marcello and Trafficante used the legitimate national security concerns surrounding the coup plan with Almeida to keep the pressure on US officials to withhold key information from
investigators, the press, and the public, to protect the US government’s ally high in the Cuban government. That pressure included continuing to have their men float “Castro killed JFK” stories that would find their way to occasionally receptive officials in Washington. Those stories would sometimes travel through government channels and other times through the press. Commander Almeida would remain high in the Cuban government and unexposed for decades, so protecting his life and his family would be a legitimate national security concern for a series of Presidents and CIA Directors, from 1963 until Almeida’s death in 2009.

One unexpected benefit of the first two approaches for the mob bosses was that various US officials and agencies would use legitimate national concerns to hide a variety of intelligence failures and unauthorized operations—not just the CIA–Mafia plots—that could have been exposed in a truly wide-ranging investigation of JFK’s assassination. National security concerns were also used to hide not just the “tight” surveillance of Oswald but the structure that allowed a massive program of domestic surveillance by a raft of agencies—including the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence—to be conducted on thousands of Americans in the 1960s, including some in the JFK investigation.

Finally, if their two main strategies failed, the two godfathers would not hesitate to resort to murder to keep their roles in JFK’s murder hidden. That wasn’t just a threat to help silence a long-time mobster like Jack Ruby—several murders would be carried out, including their gruesome slaying of Johnny Rosselli.

IN ADDITION TO Ferrie and Banister, in the weeks after JFK’s murder more associates of Carlos Marcello were interviewed by authorities about JFK’s murder. Even though at least a dozen of Marcello’s
associates and family members were interviewed or interrogated, the godfather would not be mentioned at all in the
Report
of the Warren Commission.

One of the consequences of Oswald’s death was the creation of the Warren Commission. Sometimes misperceived as something solely created by LBJ so he could control the investigation, the Warren Commission was actually created due to the efforts of several Robert Kennedy associates. Neither President Johnson nor J. Edgar Hoover wanted the Warren Commission, whereas RFK’s associates apparently saw a commission as preferable to having the whole investigation in the hands of LBJ and Hoover.

Within hours of Oswald’s death, Hoover was talking to Nicholas Katzenbach, Robert’s trusted Deputy Attorney General. While a devastated RFK was consumed with funeral preparations and family matters, Katzenbach was essentially running the Justice Department. However, Katzenbach focused on areas like civil rights and wasn’t a specialist in the areas of organized crime or Hoffa, areas that were now especially relevant in light of Ruby’s recent actions. Also, there is no evidence that Katzenbach was ever told about the JFK–Almeida coup plan, which had been withheld from all of RFK’s associates who weren’t actively involved in the Cuba operation.

Hoover’s memo of his conversation with Katzenbach on the afternoon of November 24 says, “The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” Katzenbach stated his feelings even more strongly in a memo the following day to LBJ aide Bill Moyers, declaring, “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin [and] that he did not have confederates who are still at large.” He even wrote, “Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be
cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or . . . a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists.” In his private memo to Moyers, even Katzenbach notes that “the facts on Oswald seem [almost] too pat—too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.).” Yet Katzenbach’s main goal was “to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings.” However, it’s important to note that Katzenbach’s concerns where shared by other high officials, all of whom were very concerned that rampant speculation about Oswald’s ties to Russia or Cuba could trigger an dangerous confrontation with the Soviets, at a time when an untested President had just assumed office, and much of the nation was still in shock.