The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (52 page)

O’Neill also recently revealed something that Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman said to him at the autopsy: “He told me he [had] cautioned Kennedy that morning not to be so open with the crowds for security reasons. Kennedy told him that if someone wanted to kill him, all they would have to do was use a scope rifle from a high building.” This statement was just one more indication of JFK’s mindset following the Chicago and Tampa assassination attempts. When the events of the autopsy are considered in terms of the cloak of secrecy those attempts generated for national security reasons, it starts to provide a rationale for many, if not all, of the autopsy discrepancies.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER the autopsy is well documented: JFK’s body and funeral arrangements were put in the hands of Cyrus Vance’s two trusted aides, Alexander Haig and Joseph Califano. Haig has written that he “was assigned the duty of helping with the preparations for the President’s funeral [and] handling details concerning the burial site.” Califano wrote that after JFK’s murder, he went to the Pentagon and met Vance, who put him in charge of arranging JFK’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery and told him to meet RFK there the next day.

Califano and Haig have always been careful to distance themselves from the most sensitive parts of Vance’s work on RFK’s plans to eliminate Castro, and neither ever admitted to knowing about the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Harry Williams confirmed that Al Haig did know about Commander Almeida. However, declassified files show
that Califano and Haig both worked on the Cuba Contingency Plans for dealing with the possible “assassination of American officials.” Vance’s use of Califano and Haig is logical even if Califano had not yet been told about the JFK–Almeida coup plan, because Vance knew he could count on both men to follow orders, if any national security problems arose.

ON THE EVENING of November 22, my confidential Naval Intelligence source was called back to his office. Now that Lee Oswald’s name had surfaced in JFK’s murder, he and his co-workers were given new orders: to destroy and sanitize much of the “tight” surveillance file their group had maintained on Oswald since his return from Russia. At that point, it appeared that Oswald’s file might become the subject of at least an internal military investigation, and, at worst, aspects of the surveillance might even be brought up or exposed at Oswald’s trial or in a Congressional investigation. While national security was no doubt the overriding concern in the document destruction ordered by my source’s superiors, it would also help to avoid embarrassment to those higher in the chain of command who had been aware of Oswald’s special status.

CHICAGO BRIEFLY BECAME a focus of the assassination investigation very early on the morning of Saturday, November 23. A Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository after JFK’s murder might have a paper trail that could be traced, if authorities could determine where and how it had been purchased. According to historian Richard D. Mahoney, “CIA files . . . reveal that the first lead as to the location of the rifle came from the chief investigator of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, Richard Cain, a
Rosselli-Giancana confederate.” The staff at Klein’s, a major retailer of mail-order rifles, began searching their records and “on November 23 at 4:00 a.m., CST, executives at Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago discovered the American Rifleman coupon with which Oswald had allegedly ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano,” using the “Hidell” alias.

Since the rifle had been shipped to Lee Oswald’s post office box, it appeared to many to cinch the case against Oswald. A CIA memo stated that Richard Cain, an Agency asset, was “deeply involved in the President Kennedy assassination case,” but other details of his involvement—aside from his timely tip about the rifle—are lacking. Cain was also in a position to see if word of the recent four-man Chicago threat might surface in the news media, and to plant false information to deceive authorities and the media, such as claiming that Oswald had received support from the small Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in Chicago.

AT 9:00 A.M. (EST) on November 23, 1963, CIA Director John McCone talked to Robert Kennedy. McCone was set to meet with new President Lyndon Johnson at 12:30 to start briefing him on the most pressing intelligence matters, so it’s not hard to imagine that McCone and RFK must have discussed what McCone was going to tell LBJ about the coup plan with Almeida. At that point, LBJ had had no involvement in the plan and probably didn’t even know it existed. Now, as President and Commander-in-Chief, he would have to be brought up to speed, and quickly.

McCone was about to find out a bit more about the AMLASH operation with Cuban official Rolando Cubela. According to Evan Thomas, on November 23 Desmond FitzGerald finally told “Walt Elder, the executive assistant to McCone, that he had met with Cubela in October and that one of his agents had been meeting with the Cuban
turncoat the very moment Kennedy had been shot. However, he did not tell Elder that AMLASH had been offered a poison pen or promised a rifle.” Even without knowing about the scoped rifles, “Elder was struck by FitzGerald’s clear discomfort. ‘Des was normally imperturbable, but he was very disturbed about his involvement.’ The normally smooth operator was ‘shaking his head and wringing his hands. It was very uncharacteristic. That’s why I remember it so clearly.’” Just two days later, FitzGerald would tell Cubela’s case officer to delete a reference to the poison pen in a memo, so McCone would continue to be in the dark about the assassination side of the Cubela operation.

After his talk with RFK on the morning of November 23, John McCone met with President Lyndon B. Johnson. It’s very important to look at what McCone could have told LBJ in those early hours, since it would shape LBJ’s opinions—and US policy—about JFK’s murder and Cuba in the coming days, months, and years. Of course, even though McCone was CIA Director, he was limited in what he could reveal to LBJ because Richard Helms hadn’t told McCone some crucial operations. McCone probably told LBJ the broad outlines of JFK’s coup plan with Commander Almeida. McCone also could have informed LBJ about AMTRUNK, the so-far ineffective plan to try to find other Cuban military leaders willing to stage a revolt against Castro. McCone might have known what his aide had just learned about FitzGerald and Cubela (AMLASH); but, if not, McCone probably told LBJ the following day. However, anything McCone told LBJ about Cubela would have been incomplete, since McCone didn’t know about the assassination side of the Cubela operation. As for the CIA–Mafia plots, McCone had learned about those only in August, and he had been falsely told they had ended in the spring of 1962—which is probably what he repeated to LBJ. Neither LBJ nor McCone would
have known that the CIA–Mafia plots were continuing, or that CIA officer David Morales had been working with a mobster like Johnny Rosselli. They also didn’t know that major Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime was part of the CIA–Mafia plots.

For LBJ, hearing all at once about the Almeida coup plan, AMTRUNK, Cubela/AMLASH, and what LBJ could have been told about the CIA–Mafia plots, all of those covert actions probably just seemed like different facets of one big CIA operation—one that might have backfired horribly against JFK. All that information would shape much of LBJ’s outlook about the assassination, along with another bit of news that McCone reportedly conveyed to LBJ on either November 23 or at their meeting on November 24. According to historian Michael Beschloss, McCone told LBJ that “the CIA had information on foreign connections to the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, which suggested to LBJ that Kennedy may have been murdered by an international conspiracy.” Peter Dale Scott adds that “a CIA memo written that day reported that Oswald had visited Mexico City in September and talked to a Soviet vice consul whom the CIA knew as a KGB expert in assassination and sabotage. The memo warned that if Oswald had indeed been part of a foreign conspiracy, he might be killed before he could reveal it to US authorities.” Scott says that “Johnson appears to have had this information in mind when, a few minutes after the McCone interview, he asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover if the FBI ‘knew any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy.’”

According to Gus Russo, LBJ’s former speechwriter Leo Janos said he heard the following from the spouse of an aide to Johnson: “‘When Lyndon got back from Dallas, McCone briefed him’ on the cause of the assassination, allegedly saying: ‘It was the Castro connection.’ The information was contained in a file McCone brought
with him to LBJ’s vice-presidential residence.” “According to Janos, Johnson immediately called Senator Richard Russell, relayed to him McCone’s conclusion, and asked, ‘What do we do?’ Russell replied, ‘Don’t let it out. If you do, it’s World War III.’ Johnson swore Russell to secrecy, and proceeded to destroy McCone’s file.”

However, it later emerged from CIA and FBI files that almost all of those reports had connections to associates of Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, or David Morales. And those are just the reports we know about, the ones that were eventually declassified. There are indications that other versions of the same stories—from the same or similar mob-linked sources—are among the JFK assassination files still being withheld. Other versions of those reports were no doubt among the files destroyed, such as a report Alexander Haig describes in his autobiography: “Very soon after President Kennedy’s death, an intelligence report crossed my desk. In circumstantial detail, it stated that Oswald had been seen in Havana in the company of Cuban intelligence officers several days before the events in Dallas . . . the detailed locale, precise notations of time, and more—was very persuasive. I was aware that it would not have reached so high a level if others had not judged it plausible . . . I walked it over to my superiors . . . ‘Al,’ said one of them, ‘you will forget, as from this moment, that you ever read this piece of paper, or that it ever existed.’ The report was destroyed.”

As long as he lived, Haig—later Reagan’s Secretary of State—expressed the belief that Castro was behind JFK’s assassination, as does Califano today. However, neither man realized that stories like the one they saw were not only later discredited, but also linked to the Mafia. One CIA cable that weekend tried to urge caution in dealing with such reports, but it went unheeded, at least initially. The bottom
line was that high US officials like LBJ and McCone—and lower officials who gained power in later decades like Haig and Califano—were left with the false impression that Castro had killed JFK. That mistaken impression has helped to essentially freeze US–Cuba relations since the time of JFK’s murder. However, at the time, it also served to divert attention and suspicion away from the Mafia. As the following chapter shows, Marcello and Trafficante would have their associates like John Martino continue to spread false “Castro killed JFK” stories that hinted at the JFK–Almeida coup plan, as a way to keep the pressure on US officials to stifle any truly full investigation of Oswald, his associates, and of any other suspects in JFK’s murder.

LATER REPORTS ABOUT the movements of Gilberto Lopez and Miguel Casas Saez also fed the “Castro killed JFK” beliefs shared by LBJ, McCone, and CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James Angleton. Lopez and Saez were reported to have crossed the border when it reopened on November 23 (it had temporarily been closed right after JFK’s death). Both men were en route to Cuba, via Mexico City. Both were later reported to have been in Dallas during JFK’s assassination. Lopez had left Tampa sometime after November 20, and the FBI concluded that on November 23 he crossed “the border at Nuevo Laredo”—the same border crossing used by Oswald—“in a privately owned automobile owned by another person.” However, he wouldn’t check into his Mexico City hotel until Monday, November 25, and his whereabouts on November 23 and 24 are unknown.

It’s almost as if someone was keeping him on ice, just in case some type of evidence emerged (perhaps photographic) proving that more than one gunman was involved in Dallas, or in case Oswald needed an accomplice to make the scenario of his guilt believable.
Lopez may well have been an unwitting asset for some US agency, while he was focused only on getting back to his native Cuba. But just as Oswald was manipulated by those with intelligence connections who were also working for the Mafia, the same could have been true for Lopez.

The actions of Miguel Casas Saez also appear to have been manipulated by someone wanting him to look suspicious. Some reports say that Saez flew out of Dallas on a private plane and made a mysterious airport rendezvous in Mexico City, where he transferred directly to a Cubana Airlines plane without going through Customs or Immigration. The plane had supposedly been waiting for him for five hours, and he then rode in the cockpit, thus avoiding identification by the passengers. The reports made Saez sound like a Cuban assassin, being given special treatment after fleeing Dallas. However, the House Select Committee looked into that account and found that it wasn’t true. Other reports say that Saez left Dallas with two friends after JFK was shot and crossed the border Nuevo Laredo. Since many of the reports about Saez originated with David Morales’s AMOT informants, the whole scenario is suspect, which is what the CIA and FBI eventually concluded. Still, either or both men would have made excellent patsies for JFK’s death if anything had happened to Oswald or if someone else was needed to shoulder some of the blame. At the same time, each may also have been serving (or thought he was serving) some legitimate role for US intelligence.

TO RICHARD HELMS and his aides, it would have been clear that whatever CIA operation Oswald was involved with had been subject to a massive intelligence failure. John Whitten was Helms’s Covert Operations Chief for all of Mexico and Central America. In a detailed
report that he wrote soon after JFK’s death, one kept classified for thirty years, Whitten said that after “word of the shooting of President Kennedy reached the [CIA] offices . . . when the name of Lee Oswald was heard, the effect was electric.”

As the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans, essentially its highest operational official, Richard Helms was responsible. On November 23, 1963, Helms therefore had to take control of all the CIA’s material on Oswald, both for national security reasons and probably to protect his own career. Historian Michael Kurtz has written that Hunter Leake, the Deputy Chief of the New Orleans CIA office at the time, told him “that on the day after the assassination, he was ordered to collect all of the CIA’s files on Oswald from the New Orleans office and transport them to the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.” Kurtz wrote that “[along with] other employees of the New Orleans office, Leake gathered all of the Oswald files. They proved so voluminous that Leake had to rent a trailer to transport them to Langley. Stopping only to eat, use the restroom, and fill up with gas, Leake drove the truck pulling the rental trailer filled with the New Orleans office’s files on Oswald to CIA headquarters. Leake later learned that many of these files were . . . ‘deep sixed.’ Leake explained that . . . the CIA dreaded the release of any information that would connect Oswald with it. Leake thought that his friend Richard Helms, the Agency’s Deputy Director for Plans, was probably the person who ordered the destruction of the files because Helms had a paranoid obsession with protecting the ‘Company.’”