Dead Kennedys III Reprise

First published December 5, 2006. None of the mafia dons who claimed to have plotted to kill President Kennedy in Dallas needed to inflate their already notorious reputations. In detective work an individual is suspected of murder if they had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime. The dons had more than enough of all three. Original links may have expired.

Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli and Santo Trafficante had much in common. They met at least once or twice a year, sometimes at a secluded location to avoid their surveillance like Marcello's Churchill Farms outside of New Orleans. All were in business with Jimmy Hoffa who was relentlessly prosecuted by the Justice Department. All three had worked for the CIA and participated is some way in the ongoing Castro assassination plots. Through their drug and gun running activities, they had numerous contacts with Cuban exile leaders including those few chosen to directly participate in the AMWORLD operation. The three men were under intense pressure from federal law enforcement at Bobby Kennedy's direction. And fatefully, the Mafia leaders had men who managed to penetrate AMWORLD without Kennedy's knowledge.

The authors of Ultimate Sacrifice think that by fall 1962 the bosses had begun to formulate a plan to assassinate President Kennedy using techniques they had become familiar with in their CIA work. They wanted to use snipers equipped with high powered, scoped rifles shooting at the President in a moving vehicle. They planned three assassination attempts on their own turf, Chicago, Tampa and finally Dallas. The Kennedy 'problem' came to head for the bosses in the summer of 1963. Frank Ragano, lawyer for Hoffa and Trafficante related in his book that Jimmy Hoffa, indicted for jury tampering, requested in July 1963 that President Kennedy be eliminated. Ragano passed the request on to Marcello and Trafficante the next day in New Orleans. The planning for AMWORLDhad begun in May and it gave the dons cover for their plot against JFK. By using people linked to that operation, they could communicate and move equipment for seemingly authorized reasons. More importantly, they could force the government to truncate an investigation of the President's death to prevent exposure of its own top secret assassination and invasion plot,AMWORLD.

The relationships between CIA, Mafia, and Cuban exile groups were Byzantine in complexity. Much of the 900 pages of Ultimate Sacrificeare devoted to detailing them. At least fourteen of the bosses' associates had knowledge of AMWORLD and six of them actually worked on aspects of the coup plan. But a handful of key connections demonstrate how thoroughly the coup operation was compromised. Johnny Roselli (aka Fillippo Sacco, John Rawlston) had a close relationship with David Morales, deputy chief of station of JMWAVE, the huge Miami CIA station. Morales had a long history, even by 1963, of covert ops. He had operated out of the US embassy in Havana under State Department cover, participated in the CIA sponsored 1954 coup against the President Arbenz of Guatemala, and supported the bloody suppression of the Tupemaro guerrillas in Uruguay. A trained assassin, he was considered effective but dangerous by his own colleagues.

Besides running a team of exile Cuban snipers in Key Largo and handling poison pills intended for Castro, Roselli and Trafficante associate John Martino had organized operation TILT, backed by the CIA, to infiltrate exiles into Cuba to bring back Soviet technicians willing to defect. The team was inserted, never to be heard from again. But the operation was useful for cover as Roselli later claimed that the exiles had been captured, tortured and turned around for use against Kennedy. Martino used a similar story with interviewers, claiming in 1964 that JKF had been killed by Cuban intelligence (who had allegedly recruited Oswald) in revenge for CIA coup attempts. Amazingly, the FBI knew about Martino claims that President Kennedy was involved in a plot to overthrow Castro when he was killed. The FBI memo about Martino's knowledge of a secret operation became aWarren Commission Exhibit (#657)! Later in 1975 his story changed and he admitted to a Miami newspaper that he spread false information about Oswald. He is alleged to have told his wife on the morning of November 22, 1963, "Flo, they're going to kill him [Kennedy]. They're going to kill him when he gets to Dallas."

The Chicago mob bribed Cuban exile leader Tony Varona, a CIA asset, Trafficante intimate and chosen participant in the AMWORLD operation. Varona's ties to the Mafia predated the Bay of Pigs to when he approached Meyer Lansky for financing of his exile group. The bribe is documented to have occurred at the same time Varona decided to join the AMWORLD operation. The CIA memo from August,1963 states based on an informant that Varona had been given $200,000 by Sam Giancana. Trafficante attempted to bribe Harry Williams (aka Enrique Ruiz-Williams) the Kennedys' Cuban exile coordinator. Williams went to a Miami bar to meet a CIA agent when he found Trafficante waiting for him in the bar. Trafficante wanted to give Williams "big" money so he could get his casinos back if the coup plan was successful. He turned the don down. Cuban exile leaders the mob could not corrupt, they implicated by association. Eloy Menoyo had been burned in a gun deal with Trafficante so he was cautious when dealing with him. But the mob was able to arrange a public meeting between Menoyo's trusted associate Anotonio Veciana (head of the violent Alpha 66 exile group), CIA propaganda expert and Oswald case officer David Atlee Phillips (aka Maurice Bishop) and Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas three months before the assassination. Trafficante, through John Martino and former Cuban death squad leaderRolando Masferrer, also successfully linked Oswald to a supporter ofManolo Ray, another of the five Cuban exile leaders in the AMWORLD operation. Silvia Odio was contacted at her Dallas apartment in September, 1963 by two Cubans who said they were members of Junta Revolucionario, Ray's exile group. The two Cubans introduced her to a third man, "Leon", who Odio later positively identified as Lee Harvey Oswald.

The mob also used double and even triple agents to penetrateAMWORLD. Richard Cain (aka Ricardo Scalzetti) is the most striking example of a man leading several lives at once. His existence must have been very stressful. Not only was he Chief Investigator for the Cook County Sheriff's office in 1963 and an FBI informant but he had worked for the CIA as an electronic surveillance specialist in 1962. Cain had helped bug a communist embassy in Mexico City. A year later he also became an informant for the CIA on undercover activities of Cubans in the Chicago area. He informed the agency about the Varona bribe (despite the document notation to the contrary). But his many talents did not stop there. He was a 'made' member of Giancana's crime family. Cain admitted that he had worked covertly for Giancana and had been on his payroll while a member of the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County Sheriff's office from 1962-64. Cain had also been a part of the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro.

Guy Banister, former Chicago FBI chief also fits the category of double agent. In 1963 he was working as a private detective in New Orleans. He had worked for Carlos Marcello and knew David Ferrie, Marcello's pilot. But Banister also had intelligence connections too. His former business partner was Carmne Bellino, a JFK aide, and he had worked with General Carroll who had become head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. More importantly, Banister had worked for Tony Varona's Cuban Revolutionary Counsel (CRC) doing background checks. CRC was backed by the Kennedys and had been set up by David Atlee Phillips. E. Howard Hunt, later one of the White House 'plumbers', was its CIA advisor. Banister's office was in the same building as the CRC's New Orleans office. Ferrie was the local leader's assistant. Roselli visited Banister in the summer of 1963.

Both Banister and Ferrie knew Lee Harvey Oswald and both knew aboutAMWORLD. Banister employed Oswald in the summer of 1963. Ferrie was a pilot instructor for Oswald's Civil Air Patrol unit. Oswald's uncle, with whom he lived for time, was a Marcello bookie. Oswald himself may have been a cut out working for the CIA and/or Naval Intelligence as part of the plan to get assets into Cuba for anti Castro operations. This possibility could explain Oswald's strange trip to the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. Oswald's allegedly thick military intelligence file is still classified. Regardless of Oswald's real status, Carlos Marcello would have been aware that Oswald would make a good patsy given Oswald's public pro Castro stance as the one man New Orlean's chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

The Mafia bosses also had one more thing in common: They all confessed during their lifetimes to plotting the murder of President Kennedy. Next: Dead Kennedys Epilogue