The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (39 page)

In all the JFK confessions and babel, voices do occasionally break through in support of the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” theory, headed by Gerald Posner’s
Case Closed
(1994) and Mark Fuhrman’s
A Simple Act of Murder
(2006). In their scenarios Oswald, an ex-Marine, was a good shot (the calvacade was moving slowly, and a single bullet might have hit both JFK and Governor Connally, meaning that Oswald had to fire only two shots in the time frame, not three).

The lone gunman arguments fall on disbelieving ears. An ABC News poll in 2003 found that 70 per cent of American respondents “suspect a plot” in the assassination of President Kennedy. Jack Leon Ruby is the weak link in the lone gunman, anti-conspiracy case. Why did Ruby step out of the crowd and gun down Oswald? Because he was so morally or politically outraged by Oswald’s murder of JFK that he had to take revenge? Hardly. Ruby was a hood of no fixed moral views. For the fame of it? Possibly, but the HSCA found no evidence that 56-year-old Ruby was psychologically flawed to the degree that he wished to make his mark in history as a shootist. And, when Ruby informed the Warren Commission that he would “come clean” what was he about to divulge? On balance, it must be assumed that Ruby stepped forward with his gun because he was either paid or pressurized by others to silence Oswald permanently. If someone needed to silence Lee Harvey Oswald, then there was a conspiracy

Further Reading

Mark Fuhrman,
A Simple Act of Murder
, 2006

Jim Marrs,
Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy
, 1989

Barr McClellan,
Blood, Money and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK
, 2003

Mark North,
Act of Treason
, 1991

Gerald Posner,
Case Closed
, 1994

Robin Ramsay,
Who Shot JFK?
, 2000

David E. Scheim,
The Mafia Killed President Kennedy
, 1988

Peter Dale Scott,
Crime and Cover-Up: the CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection
, 1977

Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann,
Legacy of Secrecy
, 2009

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DOCUMENT: EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS OF THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

The Involvement of organized crime.
In contrast to the Warren Commission, the committee’s investigation of the possible involvement of organized crime in the assassination was not limited to an examination of Jack Ruby. The committee also directed its attention to organized crime itself.

Organized crime is a term of many meanings. It can be used to refer to the crimes committed by organized criminal groups – gambling, narcotics, loan-sharking, theft and fencing, and the like. It can also be used to refer to the criminal group that commit those crimes. Here, a distinction may be drawn between an organized crime enterprise that engages in providing illicit goods and services and an organized crime syndicate that regulates relations between individual enterprises – allocating territory, settling personal disputes, establishing gambling payoffs, etc. Syndicates, too, are of different types. They may be metropolitan, regional, national or international in scope; they may be limited to one field of endeavor – for example, narcotics – or they may cover a broad range of illicit activities.

Often, but not always, the term organized crime refers to a particular organized crime syndicate, variously known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra and it is in this sense that the committee has used the phrase. This organized crime syndicate was the principal target of the committee investigation.

The committee found that by 1964 the fundamental structure and operations of organized crime in America had changed little since the early 1950s, when, after conducting what was then the most extensive investigation of organized crime in history, the Kefauver committee concluded:

1) There is a nationwide crime syndicate known as the Mafia, whose tentacles are found in many large cities. It has international ramifications which appear most clearly in connection with the narcotics traffic.

2) Its leaders are usually found in control of the most lucrative rackets in their cities.

3) There are indications of a centralized direction and control of these rackets, but leadership appears to be in a group rather than in a single individual.

4) The Mafia is the cement that helps to bind the … syndicate of New York and the … syndicate of Chicago as well as smaller criminal gangs and individual criminals through the country.

5) The domination of the Mafia is based fundamentally on “muscle” and “murder.” The Mafia is a secret conspiracy against law and order which will ruthlessly eliminate anyone who stands in the way of its success in any criminal enterprise in which it is interested. It will destroy anyone who betrays its secrets. It will use any means available – political influence, bribery, intimidation, et cetera, to defeat any attempt on the part of law enforcement to touch its top figures …

The committee reviewed the evolution of the national crime syndicate in the years after the Kefauver committee and found continuing vitality, even more sophisticated techniques, and an increased concern for the awareness by law enforcement authorities of the danger it posed to the Nation. In 1967, after having conducted a lengthy examination of organized crime in the United States, the President’s Crime Commission offered another description of the power and influence of the American underworld in the 1960s:

Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their governments. It involves thousands of criminals, working within structures as complex as those of any large corporation, subject to laws more rigidly enforced than those of legitimate governments. Its actions are not impulsive but rather the result of intricate conspiracies, carried on over many years and aimed at gaining control over whole fields of activity in order to amass huge profits.

An analysis by the committee revealed that the Kennedy administration brought about the strongest effort against organized crime that had ever been coordinated by the Federal Government. John and Robert Kennedy brought to their respective positions as President and Attorney General an unprecedented familiarity with the threat of organized crime – and a commitment to prosecute its leaders – based on their service as member and chief counsel respectively of the McClellan Committee during its extensive investigation of labor racketeering in the late 1950s. A review of the electronic surveillance conducted by the FBI from 1961 to 1964 demonstrated that members of La Cosa Nostra, as well as other organized crime figures, were quite cognizant of the stepped-up effort against them, and they placed responsibility for it directly upon President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy.

During this period, the FBI had comprehensive electronic coverage of the major underworld figures, particularly those who comprised the commission. The committee had access to and analyzed the product of this electronic coverage; it reviewed literally thousands of pages of electronic surveillance logs that revealed the innermost workings of organized crime in the United States. The committee saw in stark terms a record of murder, violence, bribery, corruption, and an untold variety of other crimes. Uniquely among congressional committees, and in contrast to the Warren Commission, the committee became familiar with the nature and scope of organized crime in the years before and after the Kennedy assassination, using as its evidence the words of the participants themselves.

An analysis of the work of the Justice Department before and after the tenure of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General also led to the conclusion that organized crime directly benefited substantially from the changes in Government policy that occurred after the assassination. That organized crime had the motive, opportunity and means to kill the President cannot be questioned. Whether it did so is another matter.

In its investigation of the decision making process and dynamics of organized crime murders and intrasyndicate assassinations during the early 1960s, the committee noted the extraordinary web of insulation, secrecy, and complex machinations that frequently surrounded organized crime leaders who ordered such acts. In testimony before the Senate on 25 September 1963, 2 months before his brother’s assassination, Attorney General Kennedy spoke of the Government’s continuing difficulty in solving murders carried out by organized crime elements, particularly those ordered by members of the La Cosa Nostra commission. Attorney General Kennedy testified that:

… because the members of the Commission, the top members, or even their chief lieutenants, have insulated themselves from the crime itself, if they want to have somebody knocked off, for instance, the top man will speak to somebody who will speak to somebody else who will speak to somebody else and order it. The man who actually does the gun work, who might get paid $250 or $500, depending on how important it is, perhaps nothing at all, he does not know who ordered it. To trace that back is virtually impossible.

The committee studied the Kennedy assassination in terms of the traditional forms of violence used by organized crime and the historic pattern of underworld slayings. While the murder of the President’s accused assassin did in fact fit the traditional pattern – a shadowy man with demonstrable organized crime connections shoots down a crucial witness – the method of the President’s assassination did not resemble the standard syndicate killing. A person like Oswald – young, active in controversial political causes, apparently not subject to the internal discipline of a criminal organization – would appear to be the least likely candidate for the role of Mafia hit man, especially in such an important murder. Gunmen used in organized crime killings have traditionally been selected with utmost deliberation and care, the most important considerations being loyalty and a willingness to remain silent if apprehended. These are qualities best guaranteed by past participation in criminal activities.

There are, however, other factors to be weighed in evaluating the method of possible operation in the assassination of President Kennedy. While the involvement of a gunman like Oswald does not readily suggest organized crime involvement, any underworld attempt to assassinate the President would in all likelihood have dictated the use of some kind of cover, a shielding or disguise. The committee made the reasonable assumption that an assassination of a President by organized crime could not be allowed to appear to be what it was.

Traditional organized crime murders are generally committed through the use of killers who make no effort to hide the fact that organized crime was responsible for such murders or “hits.” While syndicate-authorized hits are usually executed in such a way that identification of the killers is not at all likely, the slayings are nonetheless committed in what is commonly referred to as the “gangland style.” Indeed, an intrinsic characteristic of the typical mob execution is that it serves as a self-apparent message, with the authorities and the public readily perceiving the nature of the crime as well as the general identity of the group or gang that carried it out.

The execution of a political leader – most particularly a President would hardly be a typical mob execution and might well necessitate a different method of operation. The overriding consideration in such an extraordinary crime would be the avoidance of any appearance of organized crime complicity.

In its investigation, the committee noted three cases, for the purposes of illustration, in which the methodology employed by syndicate figures was designed to insulate and disguise the involvement of organized crime. These did not fit the typical pattern of mob killings, as the assassination of a President would not. While the typical cases did not involve political leaders, two of the three were attacks on figures in the public eye.

In the first case, the acid blinding of investigative reporter Victor Riesel in April 1956, organized crime figures in New York used a complex series of go-betweens to hire a petty thief and burglar to commit the act. Thus, the assailant did not know who had actually authorized the crime for which he had been recruited. The use of such an individual was regarded as unprecedented, as he had not been associated with the syndicate, was a known drug user, and outwardly appeared to be unreliable. Weeks later, Riesel’s assailant was slain by individuals who had recruited him in the plot.