The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (26 page)

The goals of the Kennedy brothers were both noble and politically pragmatic: to bring democracy to Cuba while also keeping the volatile issue of Cuba—and whether all the Soviet missiles had really been removed—out of the 1964 elections. Kennedy aides told me something later confirmed by a declassified memo: JFK wanted to keep Cuba from becoming a “political football” during the 1964 campaign, which would begin in January 1964. That meant they had to take action before the end of 1963, preferably at least a month before the Christmas holidays.

It’s critical to point out that for the JFK–Almeida coup plan to have worked, Commander Almeida could not take public responsibility for Fidel’s death and neither could Williams or the other Cuban exiles. The Cuban populace could hardly be expected to rally around new leaders who boasted of having killed Fidel, whom the CIA admitted was still admired by many on the island. Thus, Williams told me, someone else would “take the fall” for Fidel’s death. Williams said he had no involvement with finding the “fall guy,” that Robert Kennedy was handling that with the CIA.

Evidence gleaned from CIA memos and coup plan files indicates that Fidel’s death would have been blamed on a Russian or a Russian sympathizer, a way to help neutralize the thousands of Soviet personnel still in Cuba. Many newspaper accounts noted increasing tension
between Fidel and the Soviets in the second half of 1963. As head of the army, Almeida knew the locations of all Soviet forces in Cuba, as well as Fidel’s security plans. Almeida had enough personal prestige that if he went on Cuban TV and announced that their beloved Fidel had been killed by a Russian or Russian sympathizer, the Cuban people would accept his word, the same way most US citizens at that time would accept a pronouncement by a trusted figure such as J. Edgar Hoover. In addition, Commander Almeida was the highest black official in a country estimated to be 70 percent of African descent, so it was felt the populace would more easily rally around him than someone like the Argentinean Che Guevara (struggling as an economic bureaucrat in 1963) or one of the white Cuban officials the Russians might back.

It’s important to stress that as the months progressed, the Kennedys constantly looked for a peaceful alternative to what one memo called a potentially “bloody coup.” Yet they also continued to make increasingly detailed plans to overthrow Fidel. As discussed in later chapters, by fall the Kennedys were pursuing two different, secret “peace feelers,” trying to jump-start peace talks with Castro. When Secretary of State Dean Rusk confirmed the existence of the coup plan to
Vanity Fair
in 1994, the article’s authors asked Rusk about the Kennedys’ attempts to negotiate with Castro at the same time they were planning a coup against him. In pursuing the two strategies at the same time, “Rusk admits that the Kennedys were ‘playing with fire.’” Rusk told
Vanity Fair
, “Oh, there’s no particular contradiction there . . . it was just an either/or situation. That went on frequently.”

JFK’s earlier-noted comments to John McCone reflect this dual strategy, as does Robert Kennedy’s Oral History at Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. RFK said, “There were some tentative
[peace] feelers that were put out by [Castro] which were accepted by us.” But in the very next sentence, RFK adds that at the same time “we were also making more of an effort [against Castro] through espionage . . . in . . . August, September, October [1963]. It was better organized than it had been before and was having quite an effect.” In what may be an oblique reference to the coup, RFK says that one of his goals was “internal uprisings” and that “we were more [than just] assisting” because of his “contact with some of those people.” Pursuing peace and war at the same time also reflected the indecisiveness of the American public about Cuba. JFK biographer Richard Reeves notes that 60 percent of Americans in 1963 thought Castro “was a serious threat to world peace,” yet a slightly higher percentage “were against sending United States troops to invade Castro’s island.”

GIVEN THE DECADES of secrecy surrounding the JFK–Almeida coup plan, it’s shocking that a dozen associates of Carlos Marcello, Trafficante, or Rosselli knew about—and in seven cases actually worked on—the top-secret operation. Learning about the coup plan gave Marcello’s group the deadly secret it needed to prevent a full and public investigation of JFK’s murder, if the effort to overthrow Fidel could be linked to JFK’s murder. In addition, as plans for the coup and invasion progressed, there was also a chance that phony evidence implicating Fidel in JFK’s death could trigger a US invasion of Cuba, one that the US military had been preparing for months.

John and Robert Kennedy tried to bar the Mafia from any participation in the coup plan. That included keeping the Mafia out of Cuba after the coup’s hoped-for success, when the mob would not be allowed to reopen their casinos. Unfortunately, declassified files show that several associates of Carlos Marcello not only knew about
the secret plan, but made documented comments about this otherwise top-secret operation.

An FBI report written just weeks after JFK’s assassination quotes Jack Ruby as talking about something he must have learned before being jailed for shooting Oswald. According to the memo, Ruby talked about “an invasion of Cuba [that] was being sponsored by the United States Government.”

That long-overlooked remark wasn’t in the
Warren Report
, but it was included in the twenty-six volumes of supporting evidence and documents that the Warren Commission issued. To most in the Bureau and on the Warren Commission, and later to the relative few who read the twenty-six volumes, such a claim undoubtedly seemed absurd. But they didn’t realize that JFK’s “no invasion pledge” regarding Cuba had never taken effect and that “the United States Government” really had been planning “an invasion of Cuba.” Those plans were withheld not only from the Warren Commission but also from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and all other Congressional investigating committees.

Remarkably, as detailed in the next chapter, Ruby was just one of twelve associates of Carlos Marcello, Trafficante, or Rosselli who knew important information about the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Even more remarkable, seven associates of the Mafia chiefs were actually working on parts of the coup/invasion plan, even though John and Robert Kennedy had banned the Mafia from having anything to do with the operation.

FBI files show that Marcello’s pilot, David Ferrie, knew about the “second invasion” planned for Cuba (the Bay of Pigs being the first). According to an FBI memo, a close associate of Ferrie told the FBI about Ferrie’s “dealings with the late Attorney General Robert
Kennedy [and] plans for a Cuban second invasion.” Guy Banister, Marcello’s private detective, knew about the coup plan as well. A close friend of Banister—likely using information from the detective—even wrote an account in the summer of 1963 that described secret “Kennedy Administration planning” for Cuba in which Castro “would be the fall guy in a complete reorganization for the [Cuban] regime which will [then] be free of Soviet influence.” Banister’s friend wrote that following Castro’s removal, “a new government [for Cuba would be] set up with such men as . . . Manolo Ray,” who was one of five exile leaders chosen by RFK and Harry Williams to be part of the coup plan.

According to new witnesses uncovered by Dr. Michael L. Kurtz, John Martino—Santo Trafficante’s technician—also worked with Carlos Marcello and Guy Banister in the summer of 1963. Kurtz cites the former Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department as saying that Martino “met with Marcello himself at the Town and Country Motel.” FBI files cite several accurate descriptions Martino gave of the JFK–Almeida coup plan after JFK’s murder as he taunted the FBI with his knowledge that “President Kennedy was engaged in a plot to overthrow the Castro regime by preparing another invasion attempt against Cuba.”

Martino elaborated on the secret Kennedy scheme in an obscure newspaper article contained in an FBI file not released until 1998. In it Martino is quoted as saying—two months after JFK’s death—that when he died “Kennedy was embarked on a plan to get rid of Castro. There was to be another invasion and uprising in Cuba.” Martino accurately noted that “since the death of Kennedy the work on an invasion has virtually stopped.” He even mentioned that according to Kennedy’s plan, after the coup, “the Organization of American States
[would be involved] until an election could be set up.” The OAS role, as detailed in several of the fourteen drafts of the top-secret “Plan for a Coup in Cuba,” drawn up under Robert Kennedy’s direction in the summer and fall of 1963, wasn’t declassified until 1997. Yet Marcello’s associate Martino knew about that—and more—decades earlier.

Even Lee Oswald, who had connections to Marcello documented earlier, made an interesting remark about “an invasion of Cuba” by “the United States” at a time when almost no one was publicly speculating about such an operation. A long-overlooked
New York Times
article even quotes a Cuban exile—who had contact with Oswald in New Orleans in August 1963 and who knew David Ferrie—as saying that “Lee H. Oswald had boasted [about what he would do] if the United States attempted an invasion of Cuba.” In the summer of 1963, Oswald—accompanied by David Ferrie—reportedly visited a training camp near New Orleans that was affiliated with Manuel Artime, one of the key exile leaders for the JFK–Almeida coup plan.

CIA memos I first published in 2005 confirm that in the early 1960s, Manuel Artime was also working on the CIA–Mafia plots, which also involved Trafficante, Rosselli, and Marcello. Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s best friend, would soon become part of Trafficante’s drug trafficking network. Artime was one of seven associates of the three mob bosses who were actually working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan. The same is true for Tony Varona, the first Cuban exile leader to join Harry Williams’s operation, all while he was still working with Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli on the CIA–Mafia plots. It was their work on those unauthorized plots that allowed some of the mob bosses’ men to infiltrate the Kennedy brothers’ authorized operation, the JFK–Almeida coup plan.

E. Howard Hunt has long been the subject of speculation and Congressional investigations regarding his possible involvement in JFK’s murder, though evidence remains elusive, as explained in the book’s final chapter. Even Hunt’s taped “confession” isn’t really a confession at all but an account full of recycled (and debunked) theories, speculation, and important omissions—such as the Mafia ties of his best friend, Artime, and his longtime assistant Bernard Barker. However, Barker was definitely involved in JFK’s murder, according to Harry Williams, RFK’s friend and aide for the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Long before files linking Barker to organized crime were declassified, Williams told me and my research associate that Barker had worked for Trafficante and was doing so in 1963—at the same time Barker was working on the JFK–Almeida coup plan.

As Williams explained to me, E. Howard Hunt was one of two prominent CIA officers assigned to assist Harry Williams. Kennedy aides, former FBI agent William Turner, and
Vanity Fair
all confirmed Hunt’s work with Williams. Williams detailed to me and to William Turner the important role Barker played as Hunt’s assistant in 1963, something Barker himself indicated in published interviews. Many of Barker’s 1963 CIA files, including all those involving his admitted work as Hunt’s assistant that year, remain unreleased. However, quoted earlier was a Barker CIA memo that slipped through. It mentioned a coup plot against Fidel involving Commander Almeida. In a 1970s TV documentary, Barker said, “At the time [of] the Kennedy assassination . . . President Kennedy’s government had reached its ‘peak’ in its efforts to overthrow Castro,” something not reflected in any history books or government reports at the time Barker made his comments.

Harry Williams said there were “dozens [of meetings] from May to November [1963]” with E. Howard Hunt and a CIA security officer
assigned to the operation. Bernard Barker arranged those meetings, most of them held away from Miami. “Barker was Hunt’s assistant, very close to Hunt,” Williams explained.

As the JFK–Almeida coup plan progressed, Barker assisted Hunt with two of the most sensitive parts of the plan. Barker helped Hunt with the covert payment of $50,000 to Commander Almeida through a foreign bank, the initial installment of an agreed-upon total sum of $500,000 (more than $3 million today). Robert Kennedy had authorized the money in the event the coup was unsuccessful and Almeida had to flee Cuba; if he was killed, the money would alternatively provide for his wife and two children. Barker was well suited for such a financial role, since one of his jobs before the Bay of Pigs invasion “was to deliver CIA cash laundered through foreign banks.”

Secondly, Barker and Hunt were also part of a covert operation in which Almeida’s wife and two children left Cuba on a seemingly innocent pretext prior to the date set for the coup. The plan was for Almeida’s family to wait out the coup safely in another country, under secret CIA surveillance. RFK had also authorized Williams and the CIA to assure Almeida that if anything happened to him and his family couldn’t return to Cuba, his family would be taken care of. In addition to providing for their safety, having the family in another country, under the watchful eye of the CIA, also ensured that Almeida didn’t double-cross the CIA and the Kennedys.

Even Barker’s routine CIA reports from the summer and fall of 1963 that have been declassified—the ones that don’t mention Hunt—show him submitting a stream of information linked either to the mob or the coup plan. For example, Barker filed reports about a meeting between Manuel Artime and Tony Varona to discuss unity and noting Artime’s meeting with Trafficante “bagman” Frank Fiorini in Dallas
to buy an airplane. Barker’s CIA reports also mention Eloy Menoyo’s plan to overthrow Fidel and the operations of Manolo Ray. Barker also reported on the efforts of Sam Benton, another private detective working for Carlos Marcello, to recruit an American mercenary, part of the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel. The mercenary backed out when he learned that an associate of Johnny Rosselli was involved in the plot.