The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby (66 page)

But what of the role of certain CIA agents in creating Oswald as a “cut-out”? As Summers and others have demonstrated, the orchestration of Oswald’s trip to Mexico, his encounters in the Cuban embassy and over the phone with a top KGB officer in the Russian embassy, his receipt of $5,000 from a “Negro with reddish hair” to kill the president — all false or fabricated contentions — reveal a pattern of manipulation by agents and operatives in the CIA station in Mexico City.

After Oswald’s execution on 24 November, the Mexico City CIA cabled something new and explosive to Washington: that one Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, a U.S. passport holder who had crossed into Mexico via Laredo on 23 November, had “a probable role” in the Kennedy assassination. The source for this allegation was a Covert American Source (CAS) in Mexico’s
Gobernacion
ministry (which coordinated federal order and internal security). No less than eight cables followed, building up the story. On 27 November, Lopez had supposedly boarded Cubana flight #465 for Havana as the only passenger on the plane. The CIA station had procured a photo of the suspect as well as his passport number — 310162 — and alleged that Lopez was known in the Los Angeles area as a pro-Castro activist. At a time when everyone in Washington had already settled on the lone assassin theory to bring a quick closure to the Kennedy killing, the CIA shop in Mexico was alleging that a “suspect” had escaped to Cuba. If the story took, the sequel would be either a public or private ultimatum to Castro to hand over Lopez or face American retaliation. It might result in what David Phillips, David Morales, and Bill Harvey and the thousands of anti-Castro fighters in their train had demanded: a second invasion of Cuba, this one led by the United States.

10
  The transcript of the interview is in attorney general files, RFKP.

11
  Quoted in Summers,
Official and Confidential
, p. 314.

12
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
, p. 332.

13
  Oral history, Milton Gwirtzman, JFKL.

14
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
.

15
  Interview, Pierre Salinger. Salinger, along with Ralph Dungan, was also on the receiving end of the “divine retribution” communication.

16
  Quoted in Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 723.

17
  Guthman,
We Band of Brothers
, p. 294.

18
  Quoted in Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 721.

19
  Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys
, p. 339.

20
  Guthman,
We Band of Brothers
, pp. 306—7.

21
  Quoted in a compilation of RFK statements, “1964,” Mankiewicz Papers, JFKL.

22
  Quoted in Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 182.

23
  This account is based on James W. Whittaker, “The First Ascent,”
National Geographic
, July 1967. Besides Whittaker and Kennedy, the other climbers were: Dee Molenaar, William N. Prather, James Craig, George R. Senner, Barry W. Prather, and William A. Allard. See also coverage of the
Whitehorse Star
, 12—26 March 1967.

24
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, pp. 172—75.

25
  Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys
, pp. 339—40.

26
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 36.

27
  See Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval,
The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997), pp. 140—49.

28
  Jacques Levy,
Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), pp. 215—16.

29
  Ferriss and Sandoval,
The Fight in the Fields
, pp. 116—17.

30
  Oral history, Cesar Chavez, JFKL.

31
  Oral history, Chavez.

32
  Interview, Chavez.

33
  Interview, Huerta.

34
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 284.

35
  Ibid., p. 182.

36
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 839.

37
  Jack Newfield,
Robert F. Kennedy: A Memoir
(New York: Berkeley, 1978), p. 96.

38
  Tom Johnston’s papers at the JFKL contain as complete a documentary archive as there is on the Bedford-Stuyvesant project. Also Newfield’s chapter in
Robert Kennedy
, pp. 87—109.

39
  E. J. Dionne,
Why Americans Hate Politics
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 31—54.

40
  David Halberstam,
The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy
(New York: Random House, 1968), p. 177.

41
  Newfield,
Robert Kennedy
, p. 22.

42
  Quoted in vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 99.

43
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 855.

44
  Ibid., pp. 861—62.

45
  Interview, Novello.

46
  Goodwin,
Remembering America
, p. 224.

47
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 802.

48
  Goodwin,
Remembering America
, p. 442.

49
  Oral history, Walinsky. See also Papers of Adam Walinsky, JFKL.

50
  Oral history, Allard Lowenstein, JFKL.

51
  Quoted in vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 152.

52
  The speech text is contained in the Walinsky Papers, JFKL.

53
  Telex from Usemb Pretoria 3958, 10 June 1966, National Security Files, LBJL.

54
  Robert F. Kennedy, “Suppose God Is Black,”
Look
, 23 August 1966.

55
  Kennedy later ventured that the Japanese had achieved honorary white status because South Africa traded heavily with Japan.

56
  Robert F. Kennedy, “Suppose God Is Black,”
Look
, 23 August 1966.

57
  Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation address, University of Cape Town, 6 June 1966, Walinsky Papers, JFKL.

58
  Vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 152.

59
  Kennedy’s South African schedule can be found in the Walinsky Papers, JFKL.

60
  Oral history, Walinsky.

61
  Kennedy, “Suppose God Is Black.”

62
  This is the recollection of Lucy Jarvis, NBC producer, in Plimpton and Stein,
American Journey
, p. 156.

63
  Quoted in Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 806.

64
  
Johannesburg Star
, 11 June 1966.

65
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
, p. 302.

66
  Plimpton and Stein,
American Journey
, pp. 155—56.

67
  vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 160.

68
  The Aeschylus quote is from
Agamemnon
. Edith Hamilton,
The Greek Way
(New York: Aeonian Press, 1964), p. 156.

69
  
New York Times
, 3 November 1966. The balance of this account is taken from Jack Newfield,
Robert Kennedy: A Memoir
, pp. 25—27.

70
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
, pp. 365—66.

71
  Recordings of Telephone Conversations, JFK Series, Tape K67.02, LBJL. In his account, historian Shesol characterizes Johnson’s reference to “a man that was involved (in the JFK assassination).” But it is more probable that Johnson was referring to Rosselli’s role in the CIA-Mafia plot against Castro (p. 132).

72
  “Washington Merry-Go-Round,”
Washington Post
, 3 March 1967.

73
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
, p. 351.

74
  Copies of the complaints and motion filings are contained in the Mankiewicz Papers, JFKL.

75
  
New York Times
, 11 December 1966. Also
U.S. News and World Report
, 11 July 1966

76
  Mankiewicz’s files contain a seven-page internal question-and-answer document designed to get the story straight.

77
  
New York Times
, 1 January 1967.

78
  Quoted in Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
, p. 352.

79
  
Newsweek
, 26 December 1966.

80
  Goodwin,
Remembering America
, pp. 403—5.

81
  Rappleye and Becker,
All-American Mafioso
, p. 268.

82
  Fonzi,
The Last Investigation
, p. 31.

83
  Rappleye and Becker,
All-American Mafioso
, p. 269.

84
  Shesol,
Mutual Contempt,
p. 132.

85
  Ibid., Tape K67.02.

86
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, pp. 332—34.

87
  Recording of conversation with Gov. John Connally, Tape K67.02, LBJL.

88
  FBI Memorandum, Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 21 March 1967, AA.

89
  Leo Janos, “The Last Days of the President,”
Atlantic Monthly
, July 1973.

90
  Rappleye and Becker,
All-American Mafioso
, p. 272.

91
  CIA Inspector General’s Report, 1967, quoted in internal memo of HSCA staff investigation, p. 18, AA.

92
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, p. 335.

93
  Interview, O’Donnell.

94
  
New York Times
, 17 March 1968.

95
  George Ball,
The Past Has Another Pattern
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1982); J. William Fulbright,
The Arrogance of Power
(New York: Random House, 1966).

96
  Newfield,
Robert Kennedy
, pp. 56—57.

97
  vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 180.

98
  See Myra MacPherson’s portrait of RFK in the
New York Times
, 20 April 1968.

99
  Ibid., p. 53.

100
  Guthman,
We Band of Brothers
, p. 326.

101
  Ferriss and Sandoval,
The Fight in the Fields
, p. 141.

102
  Levy,
Cesar Chavez
, p. 272.

103
  Ferriss and Sandoval,
The Fight in the Fields
, p. 142; and Levy,
Cesar Chavez
, pp. 272—87.

104
  Peter Matthiessen,
Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution
(New York: Random House, 1969), p. 173.

105
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 852.

106
  Levy,
Cesar Chavez
, p. 196.

107
  This is Chavez’s characterization of his options in conversation with the author in September 1975.

108
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 283.

109
  Oral history, Chavez, JFKL.

110
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 282.

111
  Ibid., p. 283.

112
  Levy,
Cesar Chavez
, pp. 286—87.

113
  Quoted in Guthman,
We Band of Brothers
, p. 326.

114
  Oral history, Chavez, JFKL.

115
  Ibid.

116
  Huerta quoted in Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 282.

117
  Ibid.

118
  Levy,
Cesar Chavez
, p. 287.

119
  Oral history, Edelman, JFKL.

120
  Oral history, Chavez, JFKL.

121
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 921.

122
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, p. 345.

123
  William C. Sullivan,
The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 56.

124
  Interview, Huerta. Bill Barry did accompany Kennedy on the way down the elevator that night. Huerta’s point was that there was no security detail, ahead of and around Kennedy, and that he moved freely without interposition.

125
  Stein and Plimpton,
American Journey
, p. 284.

126
  Interview, Kit Christofferson.

127
  
Los Angeles Times
, 25 March 1968.

128
  See “Reaction to Bobby,”
Time
, 5 April 1968.

129
  vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 316.

130
  Newfield,
Robert Kennedy
, p. 233.

131
  
New York Times
, 19 March 1968.

132
  
Los Angeles Times
, 25 March 1968.

133
  Ibid.

134
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 929.

135
  
New York Times
, 19 March 1968.

136
  Doris Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 342—43.

137
  vanden Heuvel and Gwirtzman,
On His Own
, p. 318.