The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (14 page)

As eventually documented in the 1970s by Hoffa expert Dan Moldea, in 1959 the CIA was working with three mob bosses from
the northeastern United States, trying to assassinate Fidel. Those mob bosses—James Plumeri, Russell Bufalino, and Salvatore Granello—were contacted and handled by Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa, who acted as a “cutout” for the CIA in the transaction. Hoffa was a logical choice because both new Cuban President Fidel Castro and the Mafia viewed him as an ally. Before Castro and his allies assumed power on January 1, 1959, Hoffa had been involved in CIA-sanctioned arms smuggling to Cuba. By the early summer of 1959, Hoffa was participating in a complex deal, one that John and Robert Kennedy tried to unravel using their hearings and investigators. In the deal, Hoffa’s mob associates sold surplus planes to Cuba, financed by Teamster money and it also involved stolen securities. The Kennedys’ investigation hit a stone wall because they couldn’t locate a mysterious “Jack La Rue,” apparently the alias of a Hoffa associate involved in the deal. Hoffa’s complicated transaction was also likely used to provide cover for his work on the 1959 CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel. Those Hoffa-brokered plots would last for almost a year, but because the northeastern mobsters didn’t have extensive resources in Castro’s Cuba, their assassination plans made little progress.

As part of their hearings, John and Robert Kennedy wanted to question godfather Santo Trafficante about the murder of Albert Anastasia. Though Trafficante fled to Cuba to avoid testifying, in his place the Kennedys heard testimony from the Miami Crime Commission chief. Under questioning from RFK, he talked about Trafficante’s heroin network and his mob’s “twenty-one gang killings” in twenty years, “none of which . . . were ever solved.” To show he wasn’t afraid of the Kennedys or the Committee, Trafficante had ordered another mob hit the previous day, and Robert had to announce in the hearing that
he had been informed “there was another one yesterday.” Like the others, it would never be solved

On June 9, 1959, Fidel ordered that Trafficante be placed in a comfortable detention center in Havana, along with several of his mob associates. Historians still debate the reasons for Trafficante’s detention, with some saying the godfather wanted to be detained in Cuba so he wouldn’t have to return to the United States to testify about the Anastasia killing to the Kennedys or to New York City authorities. Trafficante’s confinement was comfortable, and he was even allowed to attend his daughter’s lavish wedding at the Habana Hilton. One account says that once the godfather was released, Trafficante continued to visit Havana for almost three months.

However, other historians cite Trafficante’s later testimony—and information from some of his associates—to the effect that his detention wasn’t voluntary and that at times he feared for his life. Given these conflicting views, it’s probable that his detention was initially unexpected and potentially dangerous, but as time went by, a financial accommodation was gradually reached, leading to his release. His stay in Cuba lasted until the Kennedys’ committee had finished its work.

When Trafficante was in detention, it was hard for him to access his considerable wealth, and he had no easy way to communicate with his most powerful ally, Carlos Marcello. The only way to get Marcello’s help was to use trusted messengers who could freely travel from the United States to Cuba and back without arousing the suspicion of US or Cuban authorities.

In Marcello’s organization, there was a man well suited for the role of messenger and courier between the two godfathers: Jack Ruby. Ruby’s role was confirmed by a Britsh man named John Wilson Hudson who was detained with Trafficante. Unlike most of the others
in detention, Hudson did not have a criminal record. Hudson caused a stir after the Kennedy assassination when he told authorities that in detention in 1959, he had met a man who “accompanied the person who brought Trafficante his meals.” Hudson said the man visited the detained Trafficante “frequently” and that man was Jack Ruby.

TO UNDERSTAND HOW Ruby came to be a messenger between Marcello and Trafficante in 1959—and how he came to play a critical role for both men in their 1963 murder of JFK—it’s important to look closely at his background. Knowing who Jack Ruby really was, and the role he played in organized crime for decades, is crucial to understanding JFK’s assassination, since Ruby’s actions before, during, and after the tragedy were dictated by the Mafia.

Originally born Jack Rubenstein in Chicago on March 25, 1911, Jack Ruby dropped out of high school and began working for the mob. According to Seth Kantor—the respected journalist who saw Ruby at Parkland Hospital soon after JFK was shot—the young Ruby delivered “sealed envelopes at the rate of $1 per errand for Chicago’s No. 1 racketeer, Al Capone.”

Investigator Scott Malone says that “Ruby moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1933 and began selling handicappers’ tip sheets at Santa Anita racetrack. Johnny Rosselli testified to the Kefauver Crime Committee in 1951 that he, too, had moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1933—to oversee gambling at Santa Anita for the Chicago mob.” By 1939 Ruby was back in Chicago as a “secretary to the Waste Handlers Union” and was questioned “in connection with the murder of the secretary-treasurer of the local.” Even though the victim was Ruby’s friend, he gave no useful information to the police, showing those in power that he could be trusted not to talk.

The union was “described by the FBI as ‘largely a shakedown operation.’” Malone points out “that murder enabled the mob, and eventually the Teamsters, to take over the union. ” Years later Robert Kennedy wrote that this murder was important in helping the Mafia eventually dominate the Teamsters. Luis Kutner, a Chicago lawyer and staff attorney for the Kefauver Committee, says that Ruby “hobnobbed with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, and his crowd” . . . “during this period.”

According to Michael Valentine, author of two recent histories of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), some members of “the Ruby family had a long history in the illicit drug trade.” One of Jack Ruby’s brothers “was convicted in 1939 of buying two ounces of heroin.” One high FBI official wrote that one of Ruby’s brothers “had been his informant since July 1946.” Ruby would soon also become involved in the narcotics trade. In 1947 Ruby worked in the Chicago Mafia’s attempt to move into Dallas, “according to former Dallas sheriff Steve Guthrie.” That was at a time when Marcello was just taking over control of the New Orleans Mafia. After Marcello was in firm control of the rackets in Dallas, Ruby began to perform work for his organization. The Jewish Jack Ruby could never aspire to the heights of non-Sicilian mob heavyweights like Meyer Lansky or Mickey Cohen, so the low-level mobster basically had to scramble, to do whatever he could for the local mob powers.

In 1950 Jack Ruby “briefed the Kefauver Committee about organized crime in Chicago,” according to Luis Kutner. In addition, Kutner’s “staff learned that Ruby was ‘a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters.’” This was the first of many times Ruby would appear to cooperate with authorities in return for protecting his—and his superiors’—criminal activities or to find out what authorities knew.

FBN agent “Jack Cusack had informed the McClellan Committee in January 1958 that Mafioso Joseph Civello ran the heroin business in Dallas,” and “Cusack linked Civello with Marcello, Trafficante, and Jimmy Hoffa,” according to Valentine. Mafia expert David E. Scheim wrote that later Civello informed the FBI “that he had known Ruby casually ‘for about ten years.’” An employee of Civello’s told the FBI that “Ruby was ‘a frequent visitor and associate of Civello.’” Investigative journalist “Ovid Demaris . . . reported that Civello told him, ‘Yeah, I knew Jack—we were friends and I used to go to his club.’” Civello, as noted earlier, was Carlos Marcello’s top underboss in Dallas.

Jack Ruby’s close relationship to law enforcement, a major factor in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, began to develop in the 1950s. It continued to grow into the early 1960s, when—according to one Warren Commission file—Ruby “was well acquainted with virtually every officer of the Dallas Police force.” Another Warren Commission document called Ruby “the pay-off man for the Dallas Police Department.” If Ruby was the “pay-off man,” then who was he working for? After all, Ruby was just a small-time hood. It’s clear now, and confirmed by Carlos Marcello’s own comments about Ruby during CAMTEX, that Ruby was Marcello’s pay-off man for the Dallas Police. The police corruption wasn’t just about money, since Ruby was soon involved in various nightclubs and with strippers and prostitutes. It was said that policemen never had to pay for a drink at Ruby’s club and sometimes were even provided with women.

Ruby was “very close friends” with Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, who headed the Homicide Bureau. According to the attorney for Officer J. D Tippit, “Ruby, in spite of his reputation of being a ‘hood,’ was allowed complete run of the Homicide Bureau.” Ruby
would later take advantage of that access to kill Oswald. But Ruby had even higher friends on the Dallas Police Force, and an FBI document says that Ruby “took the Chief of Police” of Dallas to “Hot Springs, Arkansas,” in 1956, when it was a gambling mecca.

Jack Ruby took advantage of his law-enforcement ties whenever he could. Roselli’s biographers documented that “from 1947 to 1963, Jack Ruby . . . was arrested nine times in sixteen years, but developed connections to the Dallas Police strong enough that he never faced a trial.”

According to one Warren Commission document, Ruby was active in the Dallas segment of Trafficante and Marcello’s French Connection heroin network, the same network that John and Robert Kennedy investigated in their 1959 hearings. The document said that in 1956, “Jack Ruby of Dallas” gave “the okay to operate” locally for a “large narcotics set-up operating between Mexico, Texas, and the East.” Ruby appears to have had a small role in making sure Marcello’s heroin that flowed through Dallas from Mexico and the Texas ports stayed en route to Chicago. Declassified files show that that same heroin network would play a role in JFK’s murder: One female heroin courier who worked for Ruby tried to expose the plot to assassinate JFK just prior to his murder. A major French heroin trafficker—Michel Victor Mertz—would be in Dallas when JFK was shot. Mertz’s associate, French Canadian heroin kingpin Lucien Rivard, was imprisoned with Trafficante in Havana in 1959.

Congressional investigator Michael Ewing wrote that “Ruby had several dozen friends, employers, associates, and acquaintances who were significantly involved in organized crime.” He also noted “Ruby’s close friendship” with the head of “the special Dallas Police unit charged with investigating organized crime cases as well as
narcotics and vice,” whom “Warren Commission testimony shows regularly (sometimes nightly) visited” one of Ruby’s strip clubs.

Also in the late 1950s, FBI files—most provided to the Warren Commission—show that Ruby became involved in gunrunning to Cuba with several associates of Santo Trafficante, among them gangsters Norman Rothman and Dominick Bartone, as well as corrupt former Cuban president Carlos Prio. Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen was also running guns to Cuba at that time, and “Ruby told one of his business partners . . . he was a close friend of Mickey Cohen.” The FBI documented numerous ties between Ruby and Cohen’s girlfriend, a well-known burlesque dancer from Texas whose stage name was Candy Barr. Jack Ruby also knew Jimmy Hoffa, according to Hoffa’s son. Much evidence and testimony shows that Ruby was involved in the same operations as “Jack La Rue.” Unbeknownst to Robert Kennedy in 1959, when he was fruitlessly looking for the mysterious Jack La Rue, Jack Ruby was running guns to Cuba with the associates of “La Rue.” Jack Ruby could have well been one of those using the La Rue alias.

IN 1959 RUBY’S Cuban gunrunning and arms deals with Castro’s men made him an excellent candidate to be a courier/messenger between Ruby’s boss Marcello and the detained Trafficante. But Ruby had an even better cover for his activities because he’d recently become an informant for the FBI. In March of 1959, Ruby had been interviewed by the Bureau and asked to become an informant. Ruby, no doubt after checking with mob superiors in Dallas such as Civello or Campisi, agreed. Such an arrangement could give him an extra degree of protection for his illegal activities and a way to find out what crimes the FBI was interested in.

In 1959 Ruby reported to the FBI “on at least eight occasions,” but according to historian Gerald D. McKnight, the Warren Commission hid that fact from the American public. It was “not until twelve years after the Warren Report was published that the American people” learned that Ruby had been an FBI informant. The fact that Ruby’s tenure as an informant overlapped with his trip to Cuba to visit Trafficante might explain why the Warren Commission refused to reveal Ruby’s role as informant for the Bureau. Ruby met with his FBI handler on July 2, 1959, less than a month after Trafficante was detained. Ruby met with the FBI again on July 21.

Trafficante originally had another messenger he could rely on, electronics expert John Martino. According to
Vanity Fair
, “Martino said that his principal mission had been to liberate gambling cash left behind by Trafficante.” Those funds were essential for any attempt to buy Trafficante’s release from his Cuban detainment. But Martino was arrested in Cuba on July 23, 1959, after a flurry of trips between Miami and Cuba. Unlike Trafficante, Martino was sent to a Cuban prison, serving three years in what he considered hellish conditions. Martino’s absence made someone like Ruby even more important as a potential messenger/courier.

According to Scott Malone, Congressional investigators found that those “who wanted Trafficante released included Johnny Rosselli and his boss, Sam Giancana—both of whom . . . visited Trafficante in jail in 1959.” Other accounts say that “Carlos Marcello attempted to free Trafficante,” so his underling Jack Ruby was apparently part of that effort.

While Trafficante was in jail in Cuba, Jack Ruby attempted arms deals to help secure Trafficante’s release, according to several accounts. Scott Malone found that “Congressional investigators”
noted in a “briefing memorandum” that “in 1959 Jack Ruby traveled to Cuba and visited Santo Trafficante in jail.” Other reports came from the “British journalist” John Wilson mentioned earlier, who was “briefly jailed by Castro” and who “said that while in jail he ‘knew a gambling-gangster type named Santo’ who, he said, ‘was visited frequently by another American gangster-type named Ruby.’” A close friend of both Rosselli and Giancana who “testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee” in the 1970s “says Rosselli told him, ‘Ruby was hooked up with Trafficante in the rackets in Havana.’”