The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (43 page)

ROBERT KENNEDY WAS continuing his unrelenting attack on organized crime, not just in the courts but also in the press. During the week of November 18 through 22, the
New York Times
ran an impressive five-part series about ties between the Mafia, Hoffa’s Teamsters, and Las Vegas. RFK had supported the
Times
investigation by providing crucial information and quotes. The articles revealed that RFK was getting ready to run the Mafia out of Las Vegas, the mob’s relatively secure stronghold. A separate
Times
story that week would have also pleased RFK, as it spotlighted the Mafia ties of one of JFK’s potential rivals, when it reported that “Sen. Goldwater admits association with Willie Bioff, labor racketeer slain in 1955 and Gus Greenbaum, gambler slain in 1958.” The publicity-shy Johnny Rosselli had ties to both murders.

RFK’s
Times
series capped an autumn full of anti-Mafia publicity, which had begun with the nation being riveted by a new series of televised crime hearings that for the first time truly exposed the inner workings of the Mafia. Mobster Joe Valachi, the star of those hearings, had cooperated with authorities only because he was facing a death sentence. RFK’s goal was to galvanize the public against the Mafia using the Valachi Hearings, held by the Kennedys’ old friend Senator John McClellan. The focus of the hearings was “Organized Crime and
Illicit Traffic in Narcotics,” striking at the heart of Trafficante and Marcello’s lucrative French Connection.

On November 20, RFK had been briefed “on the progress of the Marcello trial” in New Orleans, according to John H. Davis, who says RFK was told “a favorable verdict was expected in a couple of days. For Friday [November] 22, [Robert] Kennedy had scheduled a top-level meeting on organized crime to be attended by his personal staff and US attorneys from all over the nation. He was looking forward to giving them the good news from New Orleans as soon as it came in. On Thursday, November 21, the defense rested” in the Marcello case.

However, as Davis and a later court case extensively documented, Carlos Marcello had bribed a key juror and already knew he would be acquitted on Friday. Being in court that day would not only give Marcello an ironclad alibi for JFK’s murder; it would also allow him to plan a celebration for that evening, ostensibly to celebrate his acquittal.

RICHARD HELMS WAS busy with the CIA’s portion of the JFK–Almeida coup plan, which included the Agency’s efforts to get US “assets into Cuba” prior to the coup. However, Helms had still not given up on his own unauthorized Castro assassination operations, the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel, and the related operation with Rolando Cubela, code-named AMLASH. According to the Senate Church Committee’s later investigation, “on November 19, AMLASH told a CIA officer that he planned to return to Cuba immediately.” But on that same date, a CIA memo says “[Desmond] FitzGerald approved telling Cubela he would be given a [weapons] cache inside Cuba. Cache could, if he requested it, include . . . high power rifles w/scopes.” So, on November 20, 1963, a CIA officer telephoned Cubela
and asked him to postpone his return to Cuba in order to attend a meeting on November 22 in Paris.

It’s well documented that the CIA set the tragic timing of the November 22 meeting, not Cubela (something ignored by those who try to blame JFK’s murder on Castro, by claiming Cubela was a double agent). Cubela would be meeting with his CIA case officer at the very time JFK was assassinated, while the CIA man was trying to give the reluctant Cubela a CIA-devised poison pen to use to kill Fidel. David Morales could have orchestrated that fateful timing, knowing the cover-ups it would generate within the Agency after JFK’s murder.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO point out that JFK’s motorcade route was first announced and published in the Dallas newspapers only on November 19, 1963. A myth has grown up that somehow the motorcade route was mysteriously changed, to bring it closer to the Texas School Book Depository. The House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into that story and found it to be false. Simply looking at all the articles published that day bears them out—the dog-leg turn toward the Book Depository was there from the start. It was necessary to keep the entire motorcade from having to drive across a concrete median to reach the Stemmons Freeway.
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Prior to that announcement, the Mafia’s plotters could have assumed the motorcade would pass somewhere through Dealey Plaza, and the dog-leg turn simply made their job easier.

Yet another myth about JFK’s murder in Dallas is that somehow, the Secret Service was negligent or complicit, because they didn’t search
all the buildings along the motorcade route. It is true that Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels would later testify to the Warren Commission that “while making a security survey of the route” in Dallas “with some Dallas Police Department officers, he remarked to those present that shooting JFK with a high-powered rifle with a scope would not be difficult.” As we now know, Sorrells would have been worried about that because of the recent threats in Chicago and Tampa.

However, in Dallas, unlike in those cities, the Secret Service had learned of no specific threat or plot to assassinate JFK. The extraordinary security in Tampa, which involved police searching key buildings along the motorcade route, wasn’t typical, as is borne out by the Secret Service’s own regulations: “In general, the Secret Service does not inspect buildings along a moving [motorcade] route except under three circumstances: 1. Presidential inaugurations, 2. Visits by a king or president of a foreign country, or 3. When the motorcade route has been known for years,” and not just a few days.

AFTER CALLING OFF their attempts to kill JFK in Tampa and Chicago, Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante had one last chance to implement their plan to assassinate JFK. After JFK’s November 22, 1963, motorcade in Dallas, there would not be another opportunity to apply their plan before JFK’s upcoming coup in Cuba on December 1, 1963. Without the intense secrecy surrounding the impending coup, whose exposure could trigger “World War III,” they might not be able to trigger a national security cover-up by high US officials. The fact that the press secrecy surrounding the Tampa and Chicago attempts had held meant that local officials in Dallas would likely have little idea about the close calls JFK had experienced in recent weeks, making the job of the mob bosses easier.

The two European shooters—who had been training at Marcello’s huge, secluded Churchill Farms estate outside New Orleans—had likely never been sent to Tampa. The gunmen were taken to Dallas by Joe Campisi, Sr., Marcello’s number-two underboss in that city. Twenty-two years later, Marcello explained to his cellmate Jack Van Laningham the key role Campisi played in his plot. Campisi hid the two hitmen at his restaurant until it was time for them to go to Dealey Plaza, before JFK’s motorcade was scheduled to pass through that park-like part of downtown Dallas.

The shooters’ presence in Dallas prior to JFK’s arrival in the city might help explain an unusual police incident that the FBI withheld from the Warren Commission. Marcello’s biographer, John H. Davis, wrote that on the morning of Wednesday, November 20, 1963, two police officers on routine patrol entered Dealey Plaza . . . and noticed several men standing behind a wooden fence on the grassy knoll overlooking the plaza. The men were engaged in what appeared to be mock target practice, aiming rifles over the fence in the direction of the Plaza. The two police officers immediately made for the fence, but by the time they got there the riflemen had disappeared, having departed in a car that had been parked nearby. The two patrol officers did not give much thought to the incident at the time, but after the assassination . . . they reported the incident to the FBI, which issued a report of it on November 26. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, the substance of the report was never mentioned in the FBI’s investigation of the assassination, and the report itself disappeared until 1978.

While the incident sounds alarming by today’s standards, the area behind the picket fence was the parking lot for the Dallas deputy sheriffs and nearby was the parking lot for the Texas School Book
Depository. It was not that unusual in Dallas at that time for men to bring rifles to work in such areas, to show, trade, or sell.

One reason Bureau officials like J. Edgar Hoover withheld that report from the Warren Commission was probably that the FBI had lost track of French assassin and heroin trafficker Michel Victor Mertz—using the name of another French assassin, Jean Souetre—in Dallas shortly before JFK’s murder. Even worse, the FBI hadn’t informed the Secret Service about the matter prior to JFK’s arrival. Just over three months after JFK’s murder, on March 5, 1964, an FBI memo sent to the CIA would state that the Bureau had learned from French authorities that using the Souetre alias, “Michel Mertz . . . was in Fort Worth on the morning of 22 November and in Dallas in the afternoon.” Mertz was apparently stalking JFK, who was in Fort Worth the morning of November 22, before heading to Dallas for his afternoon visit.

ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1963, in Dallas at the Texas School Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald asked his co-worker Wesley Frazier for a ride home after work. Oswald was living in a rooming house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, while his wife, Marina, and their children still lived with Ruth Paine. Oswald usually went home to Marina only on weekends (though he hadn’t on the previous weekend), but he told Frazier that he wanted a ride to visit Marina that evening. According to Frazier, Oswald told him he wanted to get some curtain rods. Oswald planned to spend the night at Ruth Paine’s and then ride to work with Frazier on Friday.

Based on all the evidence, it appears that Oswald was planning to leave work the following day, in order—he thought—to go meet his contact at the Texas Theatre, just as confessed conspirator John
Martino said. Oswald’s goal was to get to Mexico City, and then on to Cuba, as part of a mission for a US intelligence agency (either the CIA or Naval Intelligence, or both). Warren Commission counsel David Belin outlined in a memo (not in the
Warren Report)
how Oswald could have traveled to Mexico on November 22, using bus connections and the amount of money he had. While that makes sense from the perspective of Oswald’s maintaining his lowly, far-left cover for a mission, it would be ludicrous for someone to try to escape on public transportation after having shot the President of the United States.

The following morning, Oswald would leave his wedding ring in a cup on the dresser and $170 in a wallet in a dresser drawer. Clearly, Oswald knew he was leaving Dallas and wouldn’t be back any time soon. Oswald would bring a package with him that morning, wrapped in brown paper, but it probably wasn’t curtain rods. However, it was physically impossible for the package to have contained the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle later identified as the murder weapon, that Oswald is said to have kept wrapped in a blanket in Ruth Paine’s garage.

When Oswald went to work the following morning, Wesley Frazier’s sister saw Oswald walking across the lawn toward Wesley’s car, carrying something in a long paper bag. However, the bag could not have contained the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that would be found later that day on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. She later testified that Oswald was holding the top of the package, which didn’t touch the ground. However, even a disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano was too long at 34.8 inches to hold in that fashion without actually dragging the ground.

Her account of the length of the package was backed up by Wesley Frazier, who testified to the Warren Commission that after
they arrived at the Book Depository, he saw Oswald holding the package cupped in his hand and tucked under into his armpit, under his shoulder. It’s impossible for a normal human to hold a package like that, which is as long as a disassembled Mannlicher. That is easy to demonstrate with an ordinary yardstick, which is only 1.2 inches longer than a disassembled Mannlicher. You simply can’t cup it in your hand, and tuck it under your shoulder, as Oswald did with the package. For Oswald’s body, the maximum length the package could have been was about 23 inches, not the 34.8 inches of the disassembled Mannlicher.

The sworn accounts of Frazier and his sister are important, since that means Oswald didn’t take the Mannlicher-Carcano to the Depository that day. Also critical is the fact that no one saw Oswald take any package—or any object—into the Texas School Book Depository on November 22. After they arrived, Oswald walked ahead of Frazier, who didn’t see Oswald enter the building. No one in the building saw Oswald with the package. No one saw Oswald enter the building except for Jack Dougherty, who remembered Oswald but said he wasn’t holding a package. This raises the possibility that Oswald’s package was passed off to someone waiting near the Book Depository or the parking lot.

What was in the package? There is an unconfirmed report from a mob associate that some type of demonstration or incident relating to Cuba was planned for Dealey Plaza that day. Oswald may have been told that a pro-Cuba banner would be unfurled from a Depository window, or otherwise displayed, that would embarrass JFK with a pro-Castro message. It would have been easy for Banister or Ferrie to tell Oswald such an incident would create news stories like he’d had in New Orleans that would supposedly cause the Cuban Embassy in
Mexico City to welcome him when he tried to get into Cuba. Whatever Oswald brought in his package that morning, he could have thought it was to help with such a banner or demonstration. However, the most important thing to remember is that whatever was in the package, it wasn’t the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

Finally, as events unfold over the coming days, it’s important to keep in mind that authors such as Anthony Summers have documented that “nobody has ever made the flimsiest allegation that the authentic Lee Oswald had anything but good to say about John Kennedy.” This was true in Oswald’s interrogations, his media appearances, and his private talks. Three months before JFK’s murder, Oswald had been interviewed by a New Orleans police lieutenant who later said that Oswald “seemed to favor President Kennedy [and] in no way demonstrated any animosity or ill feeling toward President Kennedy . . . he liked the President.”