The main objection to the theory that the Mafia planned the assassination of President Kennedy has always been that it would not have had the power to cover-up its role in the murder. Nor would it have had the ability to control, curtail, and compromise the autopsy, to bamboozle all the media, to intimidate witnesses speaking to FBI agents, and to appoint a blue-ribbon commission that would issue a report with 26 volumes of documentary support, purporting to prove that the assassin was a lone-nut, never once mentioning the Mafia!
Because the Mafia clearly lacked such power, either the Warren Commission was correct in attributing the assassination to Oswald, or the cover-up and murder, were conducted by higher-ups in the US Government - like Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, the FBI, etc. Or, it was the work of Fidel Castro and/or the Soviets. Were that the case, the demand by the American public for retaliation would press our leaders to launch a large-scale invasion of Cuba, which could unleash World War III. To prevent nuclear war, American leaders chose to cover up the evidence of Communist conspiracy that culminated in Dallas. The American leaders chose cover-ups and deception in preference to the truth and nuclear war.
Waldron's purpose is to remove the chief obstacles to the view that the Mafia conspiracy resulted in the assassination of Jack Kennedy. Waldron notes that in the last days of the Eisenhower Administration, CIA and Mafia links were forged in plots to overthrow and assassinate the radical Fidel Castro in Cuba. With the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in spring 1961, however, the newly inaugurated President Kennedy believed he had been misled by the CIA and proceeded to fire its leader, Allen Dulles. Many Cuban exiles blamed Kennedy for the failure of that mission because Kennedy had refused to support the landing with major air, and if necessary, American land support.
The Missile Crisis of the fall of 1962 nudged the world to the edge of nuclear war. Though some assumed there had been a "no invasion" pledge as part of the settlement, Waldron asserts that because Castro rejected inspection on Cuban soil, the no-invasion pledge was inoperative. Moreover, Kennedy ordered a halt to any American CIA collaboration with the Mafia, in part because his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was leading the prosecution of organized crime, and had even used some extra-legal tactics to deport New Orleans Mafia leader, Carlos Marcello. Nevertheless, Pres. Kennedy still authorized clandestine plots to kill Castro, while simultaneously allowing top secret negotiations with the Castro regime to come to some accommodation. But if no progress in those negotiations were evident by the end of November 1963, Pres. Kennedy decided to aid a coup in Cuba staged by Gen. Juan Almeida, the head of the Cuban army and the number three official under Castro. In this coup, Fidel would be assassinated, and Almeida's new government would request military intervention from the US to complete the counter-revolution. The working date for that operation was 1 December 1963.
Unbeknownst to Kennedy and his new CIA leader, John McCone, however, the CIA's Director of Planning Operations, Richard Helms, now held the highest operational post in the agency. Helms knew of the previous CIA-Mafia collaboration toward eliminating Castro, and he ignored Kennedy's demand to cut ties with the Mafia. Instead, those earlier ties were retained and solidified between some CIA operatives and Mafia organizations in Florida (led by Santo Trafficante), Chicago (represented by Johnny Rosselli), and New Orleans (led by Marcello once he made it back to the US, probably flown in by pilot David Ferrie).
By linking the government approved assassination plots to kill Castro, with its own plots to kill Kennedy, the Mafia would make it impossible to unravel the truth without exposing the US government's own deadly secrets to the American people, AND exposing General Almeida in Cuba to the wrath of Fidel. Moreover, if the Mafia plot were successful, it could then plant false information implicating Castro as the culprit. This might lead to calls for invasion of Cuba, Soviet retaliation, and WWIII. The US government would then find it necessary to avoid war by covering up what really occurred in Dallas. Thus, the cover-up was not conducted by the Mafia, but by innocent American leaders bent upon avoiding atomic war: President Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, et al.
Waldron uses information garnered from tapes recorded for the FBI when Mafia chief Marcello was imprisoned; he confessed his role in the Kennedy assassination to a fellow inmate who was wearing a wire. The information was not released when originally recorded, nor in 1986 when the FBI operation concluded, nor in 1992 when the Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Act. In 1998, the FBI released the information, but it was buried in a flood of less important documents released at the same time. Waldron's own research found the confessions in 2006 and in this book he makes an impressive case. Waldron asserts that the Mafia planned the assassination with plots in at least three cities that Kennedy would visit in the fall of 1963, and in each, a Lee Oswald-type patsy had been selected to deflect suspicion from the real killers. Chicago, Tampa-Miami, and Dallas were the three sites that Kennedy would visit where Mafia hit men were imported to crush Camelot. Waldron also refers to confessions by other Mafia leaders, including Trafficante, and Rosselli. Waldron is good at reminding readers of how, when Congress reinvestigated the Kennedy murder, several Mafioso leaders were killed in most brutal fashions the day before they were to testify. In addition, the wealthy white Russian who befriended the poor, "Marxist" Oswald in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt, commited suicide the day before his scheduled testimony. Waldron reminds readers of the number of "coincidental" deaths when Congress reinvestigated the events in Dallas.
Waldron provided an excellent time-line studded with provocative tidbits of information. Thus, we learn that during the height of the Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, Oswald, the "defector" to the USSR married to a Russian, gets a job in Dallas with a corporation performing sensitive photographic work for the US government, such as interpreting pictures of Cuban missile movements. (154) Furthermore, despite his "defection" and his later distribution of Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, Oswald was never placed on the FBI's Security Index.(250, 258) Another item to ponder: Waldron reveals that both Jack Ruby and Gen. Edwin Walker (the right-wing general whom Oswald allegedly shot at) were closeted homosexuals.(174) Of course, one could argue that in the 1960s almost all gays were closeted. In that era, if a man were openly homosexual, "out," he was either "in" prison or "in" a mental institution. Waldron also mentions the story of J. Edgar's alleged arrest for homosexuality.(231) Yet, Clay Shaw is barely mentioned in the book.
Before engaging in a general critique of the book, I shall point out some minor errors. Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs, father of ABC and NPR commentator Cokie Roberts, was a US Representative, not a Senator.(31) Boggs WAS a member of the Warren Commission, but Louisiana Sen. Russell Long was NOT.(146) Also, Waldron asserts that "there were only two time periods when Oswald could have worked for Marcello as a runner: one in late April or early May 1963...and the other in late July, August, and ...September 1963,..."(181-82) But Oswald might have worked for Marcello much earlier, when he was a teenager living in New Orleans.
I disagree with Waldron's assessment that the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison hindered the investigation by mainstream media of the Kennedy assassination.(15) Though the jury quickly found Clay Shaw not guilty of conspiring to kill JFK, they told local reporters that they were convinced that JFK was a victim of a conspiracy. Garrison's prosecution showed the Zapruder film in the courtroom, eventually unwrapping it for all to see how Kennedy's head moved to the back and left when struck by the fatal shot. Under oath Dr. Pierre Finck described how doctors in Bethesda followed military orders at the expense of providing Kennedy a thorough autopsy. If the national media were hostile to Garrison, not all of the local outlets were so biased. Thus, when local news reporters pressed Atty. Dean Andrews (a Marcello atty., according to Waldron) after he was indicted by Garrison for perjury, Andrews initially sought to evade the reporter's questions. Finally he blurted out, "If they can kill the President, they can squash me like a roach." These are but a few of the revelations that were a consequence of Garrison's courage in challenging the Federal Government's narrative about the assassination.
At the outset of Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, the Federal Government openly intervened to obstruct. US Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced that the Feds had already investigated Shaw and concluded he had nothing to do with the assassination! When was this investigation? Who investigated? Why did they investigate Shaw? The Feds did everything possible to obstruct the Garrison prosecution, so that crucial witnesses could flee Louisiana, and governors like Ronald Reagan of California and James Rhodes of Ohio, after consulting with federal officials, simply refused to extradite important witnesses like Gordon Novel. How could any DA win a case under such circumstances?
Even Waldron concedes, "Recently released FBI files show that in the late spring of 1967, Garrison twice privately considered indicting Marcello for the assassination of JFK but decided not to."(458) Waldron's thesis is that Marcello was guilty of the murder, and yet he claims that the only official who contemplated charging Marcello with that crime, simply hindered mainstream media investigations! Were those recently released FBI files that Waldron refers to intended to facilitate DA Garrison probe? Or to sabotage it? And had Garrison charged Marcello with killing Kennedy, would the mass media have been any more sympathetic to Garrison?
Waldron includes a most salient paragraph: "...declassified files now show that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA Director Richard Helms immediately began a significant public relation counteroffensive, issuing detailed instruction on how to smear critics of the Warren Report. For example, in a January 4, 1967, CIA memo in which the Agency gives 53-pages of specific instructions on how to counter the growing tide of books and articles questioning the `lone-nut' conclusion...In many ways, those PR counteroffensives by the FBI and CIA would last for decades, and some writers make the case that they continue even today."(14-15)
Garrison failed to convict Clay Shaw. I would contend because of the hostility of the Feds, there is no way Garrison could have convicted Marcello either. The national, main-stream media followed the marching orders of the federal government - orders issued softly through their agency operatives and friends.
Important in the "get Garrison" media campaign was journalist Walter Sheridan. Waldron maintains Sheridan was sent to New Orleans by Robert Kennedy. Why would Robert Kennedy seek to destroy a DA who at least considered charging Carlos Marcello, arch-nemesis of the Kennedys? And was Robert really the dominant figure in the autopsy of his brother at Bethesda, as maintained by Waldron?(399-401)
Because the thrust of Waldron's book is assassination by the Mafia, he mentions the murder of Guatemalan leader Castillo Armas in July 1957 by a "lone Communist" assassin, who then killed himself with the same weapon used to kill Armas. But there were rumors at the time that Armas had run afoul of the Mafia, and Rosselli was then in Guatemala.(94) Shortly after the Bay of Pigs, the strong man of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo was assassinated in what Waldron calls a gangland-type murder.(145) And since Waldron explicated MafCia assassinations, he might have expanded his all-to-brief accounts of two other assassination, even if the Mafia had nothing to do with them: - 1) the assassination of the Prime Minister in the newly independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba on 17 January 1961 (p. 136, though his name is misspelt in Waldron's index); and - 2) the assassination of South Viet Nam's Ngo Dinh Diem on 2 November 1963.(303) With Waldron's slight treatment of the latter, he evades speculation on the CIA's role in that murder and its effect on future American policy in Vietnam and any connection between Diem's demise may have had on events in Dallas. Because Waldron's thesis is that the Mafia had to blur the lines between two plots, an anti-Castro one in league with the CIA, and the one targeting JFK, he might have elaborated more on the CIA practices.
There are anomalies in Waldron's work. On the one hand, we read that: "The [New Orleans police lieutenant who talked to Oswald after his arrest with the FPCC in NO] also said that Oswald `liked the President,' a sentiment shared by most people who ever heard Oswald mention JFK;"(251) and :"...It's important to keep in mind that others 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 is true of Oswald's interrogations, his media appearances, and his private talks."(338)
On the other hand, Waldron also reports that: "The head of the Ku Klux Klan told veteran newspaper report and editor Patsy Sims that he had met with Oswald in Atlanta. In her definitive history of the Klan, Sims writes that `one of her sources told her that Oswald, in the summer of 1963, had called on [Klan] Imperial Wizard James Venable in his office in Atlanta seeking the names of right-wing associates. Venable confirmed [to Sims] that he was fairly sure that Oswald had been there for that purpose.' Oswald indicated to Venable that he was on his way to Chicago. Klan leader Venable made his statement to Sims in the 1980s and it is difficult to see why Venable would make up an Oswald encounter since it tended to link Oswald with `right-wing associates,' thus potentially giving the FBI reason to interview or investigate them."
"In the 1960s, Klan leader Venable was close to an associate of Guy Banister, white supremacist Joseph Milteer, who lived in Georgia..."(286)
If this meeting did occur, it may have had more to do with the Banister-, Milteer-, far-right plot than about Oswald's personal opinion of Kennedy. Oswald may have simply been following Banister's instructions, as he had done when pretending to be a Castro-sympathizer handing out FPCC leaflets.
A related question: what was the connection between the Mafia and the racist, far-right? Clearly, some Cubans who had fled Castro's far-left oppression in Cuba, may have felt more comfortable with right end of the political spectrum. The KKK certainly inhabits that end. Milteer, who was taped predicting the assassination prior to events in Dallas, and then gloating about them, was clearly far-right. So did Milteer, who prediction of, and later gloating over, the assassination was tape-recorded. Moreover, Milteer declared that the conspiracy to kill Kennedy originated in New Orleans, backed by considerable sums, not all donated by right-wingers. Milteer mentioned only one Louisiana politician (311), but Waldron does not reveal that name. I will go on a limb to say that I suspect the politician was the leader of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish (county), Judge Leander Perez.
In 1952 when Judge Perez decided to endorse the Republican ticket of Eisenhower and Nixon for President, Plaquemines Parish voted over 93% for the Republicans - the highest percentage of any county in the entire nation.(Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta, p. 194) In November 1960 when courts ordered desegregation of two New Orleans schools, Perez urged defiance, and allowed whites to escape their integrated school by attending schools in neighboring St. Bernard Parish (also Perez=dominated). In 1961 CORE began its Freedom Rides, where CORE members on buses attempted to integrate bus stations from Washington, DC, to New Orleans. Most were stopped by brutal mobs or arresting police, and one bus was burnt. This made national and international headlines. It was rumored (not Jeansonne's biography, but my memory is the source for the rest of this paragraph - HM) that Perez then induced George Lincoln Rockwell to travel from his base in Virginia through the same route as the Greyhound buses to New Orleans on his "hate bus." Rockwell was leader of the American Nazi Party. Before entering New Orleans, local police demanded that he cover some of the signs that decorated his van - "Kill Commies, Queers, and Jews!" When in May 1961 Rockwell and some of his uniformed crew were arrested for picketing the film "Exodus," there were rumors that Guy Banister, a one-time Acting Superintendent of the NO Police, paid his bail. When Judge Perez went to the Hotel Roosevelt's Blue Room (possibly the premier NO night spot at that time), Ted Lewis was performing. One of his signature acts was to sing "Me and My Shadow," while a Black dancer in black clothing danced as his shadow. The judge was not happy with this integrated entertainment. Perhaps he was aware that Ted Lewis had been born, Theodore Friedman. To express his displeasure, the judge purposely broke glasses where the shadow was to step, causing the Black to cut his foot. In the spring of 1969 Judge Perez passed on. In Plaquemines Parish, two young Black men entered a store and announced they wanted to purchase liquor to celebrate the death of the Judge. They were quickly arrested and sentenced to 6 month's hard labor. After serving only a few months, the NAACP succeeded in curtailing the sentence.
Why would Marcello have a low-level racial extremist like Milteer aware of the plot to kill Kennedy if this were merely a Mafia operation? Does this make sense?
Let me describe several incidents related to the question I just posed. It is truly amazing how different our relatives can be from each other and from ourselves. By the late 1950s I had become an integrationist in my native New Orleans. This amounted to little more than speaking in favor of the idea in high school and then college. That changed in September 1960 when I was among the seven arrested in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans. It occurred at the large Woolworth's on Canal and Rampart Streets. When my father heard of the sit-in in progress, he left work to try to get me away. Police had cordoned off the counter area, and would not allow anyone to pass. With our arrests, and our names on p. 1 of the local paper and on national TV (we did not see it as we were still in jail), it was now clear to all that I was a nlover. Although I moved from my parents' home so as not to endanger them, it did not matter. They received phone calls in the middle of the night, threatening to bomb the home. Thank God we had no restrictive gun control laws back then. My father easily borrowed a gun and bullets from a co-worker. After a few months, the spotlight of hatred moved to the other end of the city, for in November Perez and others were instigating resistance to the court-ordered desegregation of two public schools. I was suddenly old news. My dad felt safe enough to return the gun. Upon getting it back, his co-worker asked my father, "Why did you borrow so many bullets? Only one would have done the job." I was not very popular.
But one relative sought to help, - my crazy uncle. Of course, he probably thought of me as his crazy nephew. After my arrest with CORE for integration, my uncle sought to restore honor to the family, by sending money to George Lincoln Rockwell's organization. As a young child I once overheard him moaning over some beers, "Oh, if only Hitler had won." My uncle had been in the merchant marine and had risked his life during WWII to get supplies to the nations fighting against the Axis. But he did not agree with FDR's foreign policy. Meanwhile, I had been convicted of a felony (the sit-in), and was trying to survive. I certainly was not seeking another arrest, but I did continue to participate in various demos throughout the 1960s, any one of which might result in an arrest. Finally, in 1969 my car was followed by a police helicopter, and when I let a passenger out of the auto, he was immediately arrested. I decided then it was time to leave my native city.
I would occasionally see that uncle when he visited my parents. He had a special greeting for me, "How are the burr heads doing?" This would rile me a little, but I knew him well enough just to roll my eyes. Sometimes he would speak with my dad, but sometimes he would address me, "Oh, that Bobby! They're gonna get that Bobby!" He was referring to Atty. Gen Robert Kennedy who seemed to be pushing integration. I just tried to ignore him.
After a few years, I moved back with my parents and got a job teaching 5th grade in a new, private school. Around lunch one day, Mrs. Flagg, another 5th grade teacher called me to her class room across the hall. Hers was enjoying a free period for lunch, and one of her pupils had brought in a new item, a transistor radio. She told me to listen. Most of her class was playing, making lots of noise, while she and I craned our necks above the 10-year-old and his radio. I heard the main points, but could not leave my class unattended for long.
When I returned to my class, I informed them that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The class cheered. I was stunned. One girl placed her head on the table and cried. She was the exception. That was November 1963. Sometime after that, probably early 1964, I again encountered my uncle. "What did I tell you, huh? What did I tell you?" Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he became more explicit, "Didn't I tell you they were going to get him?" Suddenly, shocked, I realized what he was referring to. Now, I tried a counter. "But you said they were going to get Bobby!" "Well, they got the other one instead." This time, exasperated, I finally asked, "Who is this `they' you keep talking about?" He quickly responded, "The mob out in the parish." By the mob, he meant Marcello; by "out in the parish," he meant Jefferson Parish. When he said this, my parents resided one block from the Airline Highway and the Church with the Neon Bible. We were only a few blocks from Jefferson Parish and Marcello's office in the Town and Country Motel. My uncle's response simply confirmed my view that my uncle was crazy. Who in early 1964 was linking Carlos Marcello to the Kennedy assassination? This sounded ever more absurd. When he said this, I had already earned a BA and an MA from Tulane University. My uncle had finished 5rd grade. I was a scholar. He drove a taxi. It was easy to dismiss his ravings. But years later I could only wonder, were they really ravings? Or was I too arrogant to accept information when it was handed to me?
Despite the occasional repetition and lack of footnotes, and a few minor errors, Waldron has written a book that will be difficult to ignore.
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The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination: The Definitive Account of the Most Controversial Crime of the Twentieth Century
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- S. J.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 4, 2013
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