The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby (65 page)

101
  For a description of Harold “Happy” Meltzer, see Ed Reid,
The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America: The Grim Reapers
(Chicago: Regnery, 1969), pp. 291—92.

102
  Joseph W. Shimon, FBI statement, 8 September 1976, Rosselli file, AA; interview, Shimon.

103
  This account is drawn from Staff Summary of FBI file for Paulino Sierra Martinez, HSCA. Also HSCA Staff Summary of CIA file, n.d.

104
  
Miami News
, 19 May 1963.

105
  HSCA Staff Summary of CIA Handbook, Secret.

106
  Staff Summary for Carlos Quesada, Ref. FBI Report #105— 1210—31, 28 January 1964.

107
  FBI memorandum from Miami, 14 November 1963, HSCA.

108
  Re: Richard Cain, undated FBI teletype, Chicago Crime Commission files.

109
  See HSCA Staff Summary Re: “Richard Cain Information.” The $200,000 donation was provided by a “confidential informant” of the FBI in July 1963.

110
  See FBI memorandum, 2 November 1963, from Miami. Also Staff Summary of CIA File, HSCA.

111
  In the course of its investigation into Paulino Sierra in 1978, the HSCA staff investigated Rogelio Cisneros, who admitted in 1964 that he had visited Silvia Odio, the daughter of a prominent anti-Castro exile in Dallas during the summer of 1963. Odio later told the FBI and the HSCA, in a widely accepted account, that she was visited in September by two Hispanic men and a “Leon Oswald.” On that trip, Hall, who had served time with John Martino and Santos Trafficante in La Cabana prison in Cuba, and Lawrence Howard were driving from Los Angeles to Miami with a trailerload of arms that they later said they had to leave in Dallas for lack of a hiding place in Florida.

112
  
Times-Picayune
, 1 August 1963. Also, Hinckle and Turner,
The Fish Is Red
, pp. 199—200.

113
  HSCA Staff Summary of FBI file as well as the CIA file.

114
  See footnote 42, at pp. 340—50, that reports Hall’s commentary to authors Hinckle and Turner in
The Fish Is Red
. In 1977, Hall testified on condition of immunity from prosecution. In a taped interview that same year, he stated: “As it stands right now, there’s only two of us left alive — that’s me and Santos Trafficante. And as far as I am concerned we’re both going to stay alive — because I ain’t gonna say shit.” Quoted in Anthony and Robbyn Sommers, “The Ghosts of November,”
Vanity Fair
, December 1994, p. 112.

115
  The author’s efforts in Cuba in May—June 1997 to determine what happened to Bayo and his fellow raiders turned up nothing but hearsay reports that they had all been killed in a firefight with Castro forces.

116
  Ruby’s trips to New Orleans, Miami, and probably Las Vegas and Ruby’s long-distance calls to Mafia hitmen like Russell Matthews, Lewis McWillie, and Barney Baker (who also worked for Hoffa), as well as his contacts with Mafia chieftains like Irwin Weiner and Nofio Pecora, are detailed in Scheim,
Contract on America
, pp. 215—30.

117
  William Scott Malone, “The Secret Life of Jack Ruby,” New Times, 23 January 1978.

118
  Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
, p. 1015.

119
  Stewart Udall, unpublished ms., “A Memoir of John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost’s Odyssey of Poetry and Power,” Udall file on Frost and Amherst dedication.

120
  Udall, “Robert Frost’s Last Adventure,”
New York Times Magazine
, 11 June 1972.

121
  Ibid.

122
  Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
, p. 1015.

123
  Interview, Udall.

124
  A photocopy of the president’s reworked text is in Udall’s file of the trip.

125
  Archibald MacLeish,
A Continuing Journey
, pp. 299—306.

126
  President Kennedy, annotated, interlineated speech draft, Udall file on Frost and Amherst dedication.

127
  Summers,
Official and Confidential
, pp. 309—12.

128
  In an interview for the Kennedy Library in March, April, and May 1964 with John Bartlow Martin, RFK said: “Basically [Korth] had an exchange in correspondence with a bank about taking customers of his out on the
Sequoia
(which is a U.S. Navy boat) in order to help the bank get customers. He was taking an interest in which the bank had an interest.” Guthman and Shulman,
In His Own Words
, p. 372. Kennedy then contended that the TFX scandal — in — volving the awarding of a $6.5 billion contract to the General Dynamic Corporation to build the TFX jet fighter — and Korth’s firing were unrelated. For an alternative view, see Russell,
The Man Who Knew Too Much
, p. 523.

129
  RFK later said, “John McClellan was looking for a scandal. . . . Our relationship with McClellan deteriorated very badly during this period of time, and I had a bitter exchange with Jerry Adlerman [chief counsel, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations].” Guthman and Shulman,
In His Own Words
, p. 371.

130
  Demaris,
Captive City
, p. 227.

131
  See Mr. Belmont to C.A. Evans Memorandum, Subject: John Roselli (
sic
), 22 August 1963.

132
  Special Investigation Division, FBI memorandum of 4 November 1963.

133
  Guthman and Shulman,
In His Own Words
, p. 130.

134
  Summers,
Official and Confidential
, pp. 312—13.

135
  Interviews, Harriman, Ball, Bundy, Rusk. Ball’s transcribed phone conversations reveal the apparently accurate rumor that Harriman might be demoted by the president, a possibility Robert Kennedy opposed.

136
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 770.

137
  Quoted in Roger Hilsman,
To Move a Nation
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), p. 501.

138
  The memorandum, written by Bundy’s aide Michael Y. Forrestal, is dated 26 April 1962.
New York Times
, 5 December 1998.

139
  See Douglas Brinkley,
Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years
, 1953— 71 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 174.

140
  George Ball,
The Past Has Another Pattern
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), p. 312.

141
  Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 280.

142
  Guthman and Shulman,
In His Own Words
, p. 404.

143
  Maxwell Taylor,
Swords Into Plowshares
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 301.

144
  See chapter “January 18, 1961, Léopoldville, The Congo.”

145
  Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
, p. 98.

146
  Interview, Samuel E. Belk III. The date was 5 October 1963. The National Security Council meeting was supposed to adjourn at 10:45 A.M. but the president’s scheduled meeting thereafter with U.S. ambassador to France Charles “Chip” Bohlen was canceled and the NSC meeting continued in the Rose Garden.

147
  Manchester,
One Brief Shining Moment
, p. 86.

148
  Interview, Powers.

149
  Fletcher Knebel, “Kennedy vs. the Press,”
Look
, 26 August 1962.

150
  Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 37—39.

151
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, pp. 172—73. The HSCA reached a similar conclusion about Marcello’s and Ferrie’s weekend together.

152
  Rappleye and Becker in
All-American Mafioso
, p. 245, detail Rosselli’s connections.

153
  Rosselli’s Phoenix trip is fully set forth in FBI LA telexes to HQs 92—113, 92—446, 21 November 1963.

154
  Manchester,
One Brief Shining Moment
, pp. 259—60.

155
  Helms, Remarks at Donovan Award Dinner, 24 May 1983. Quoted in Ranelagh,
The Agency
, p. 416.

156
  Helms’s testimony is found on p. 91 of the Church Committee’s Interim Report: “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.”

157
  Corn,
Blond Ghost
, pp. 105—6.

158
  Interview, Ricardo Alarcon.

159
  Jean Daniel,
Le Temps Qui Reste
(Paris: Gallimard, 1984), pp. 201—08.

160
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, pp. 175—76.

161
  Manchester,
Death of a President
, p. 17.

162
  O’Donnell and Powers, “
Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye
,” pp. 18—19. Interview, O’Donnell.

163
  Robert MacNeil,
The Right Place at the Right Time
(Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1982), p. 200.

164
  Quoting O’Donnell in Blakey and Billings,
The Plot to Kill the President
, p. 7. Interview, O’Donnell.

165
  Ibid., p.26.

166
  Manchester,
Death of a President
, p. 121.

167
  Scheim,
Contract on America
, pp. 22—23.

168
  Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, p. 177.

169
  Jim Marrs,
Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), p. 133.

170
  O’Donnell and Powers, “
Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye
,” p. 29.

171
  Andersen,
Jack and Jackie
, p. 365.

172
  Jim Marrs,
Crossfire
, pp. 333—37. Gerald Posner disputes the claim that Harrelson was one of the tramps in
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
(New York: Random House, 1993), p. 465.

173
  Josiah Thompson,
Six Seconds in Dallas
(New York: B. Geiss Associates, 1967), p. 122.

174
  House Assassination Hearings, U.S. Congress, Select Committee on Assassinations, p. 556.

175
  This account is taken from Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 195—97.

176
  Ibid., p. 259.

177
  Oral history of Walter Sheridan, RFKP, JFKL.

178
  Summers and Summers, “The Ghosts of November.”

179
  
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
, 7 December 1977.

180
  Ibid., p. 387.

181
  Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 391—92.

182
  Quoted in ibid., p. 646.

183
  Oral history of Charles Spalding, JFKL.

184
  Interview, Udall.

185
  See FBI memorandum to Director 92—113, 28 January 1964, HSCA, AA; Rappleye and Becker,
All-American Mafioso
, pp. 249—50.

186
  Manchester,
Death of a President
, p. 372—73.

Bobby Alone: 1964—1968

1
  William vanden Heuvel and Milton Gwirtzman,
On His Own: Robert F. Kennedy 1964—68
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 43—44. At Columbia University, Kennedy said, “As I said when I was asked this question in Poland, I agree with the conclusion of the report that the man they identified was the man, that he acted on his own, and that he was not motivated by Communist ideology.”

2
  Guthman,
We Band of Brothers
, p. 244.

3
  Interview, Powers.

4
  Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys
, p. 315.

5
  Interview, O’Donnell.

6
  Interview, Dungan.

7
  Jeff Shesol,
Mutual Contempt
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 131.

8
  Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p. 664.

9
  “A torrent of prejudicial information about Oswald started to flow within hours of the assassination,” Anthony and Robbyn Summers have written. (“Ghosts of November”). Clare Boothe Luce got a late-night call on 22 November from one of her anti-Castro Cuban “boys” in New Orleans. He claimed that the DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil) had “penetrated” Oswald’s organization and had actually tape-recorded Oswald saying he was “the greatest shot in the world with a telescopic rifle.” Luce later said that she told him to turn over everything to the FBI. Then there was the matter of linking Oswald to the murder weapon. On 23 November at 4 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, number C2766. CIA files from the Assassination Archives 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 who had been involved in the first plot to hit Castro.

According to John V. Martino, Oswald had been “put together” by “anti-Castro types. . . . Oswald didn’t know who he was working for. . . . He was to meet his contact at the Texas Theatre [the movie house where he was arrested]. . . . They were to meet Oswald in the theater and get him out of the country, then eliminate him. Oswald made a mistake. There was no way we could get to him. They had Ruby kill him.” Martino told his wife after the assassination, “When they went to the theater and got Oswald, they blew it. . . . There was a Cuban in there. They let him come out. They let the guy go, the other trigger.” This conforms with what Johnny Rosselli told columnist Jack Anderson in 1967: “When Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald.”