The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

by Jon E. Lewis

  LBJ apparently had no shortage of willing helpers. Mark North’s Act of Treason (1991) posits that LBJ was helped by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who was known to loathe JFK and his brother Bobby, the Attorney General.

  In a taped interview with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jackie Kennedy is reported to have put her name to the list of those who believe LBJ was behind JFK’s murder.

  The Mob

  The HSCA investigation also identified the Mafia as possible conspirators in the plot to assassinate Kennedy. The Mob, so the theory runs, murdered JFK in retaliation for the heat put upon them by Attorney General Robert Kennedy (who had increased by twelve times the number of mob prosecutions Eisenhower had managed). What HSCA was too discreet to mention was that the Kennedys had long been in bed with the Mob (literally in the case of JFK, who had an affair with Sam Giancana’s girlfriend Judith Campbell Exner) and had used Mafia money in the campaign to secure the White House. The Mob didn’t like the campaign against them, and even less did it like the Kennedys’ hypocrisy. Mafia bosses Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante Jr topped the list of HSCA gangster suspects.

  In their turn, David E. Scheim in The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, and Lamar Waldron/Thom Hartmann in Legacy of Secrecy squarely accuse Marcello as being the man who whacked the president, with a little help from his friends Santos Trafficante and Johnny Roselli. Marcello, whose Mob territory embraced New Orleans and Texas, had once been hustled out of the USA by immigration agents directed by Robert Kennedy to be dumped in Guatemala. Slipping secretly back into New Orleans, he vowed revenge against the Kennedys. According to a memo quoted in the Waldron/Hartmann book by an FBI informant who met with Marcello in 1985: “Carlos Marcello discussed his intense dislike of former President John Kennedy as he often did. Unlike other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion Carlos Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, ‘Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did it. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.’”

  HSCA, Scheim and Waldron/Hartmann all found ties between Oswald, Jack Ruby and the Marcello mob of New Orleans. Ruby, a sometime foot soldier for Capone in Chicago, was tasked with “off ng” Oswald before he could squeal. Scheim highlights telephone records showing that, as the assassination date approached, Ruby made numerous calls to relatively high Mob figures in Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles, as well as to two associates of Jimmy Hoffa, the Mob-friendly teamster boss. Ruby later told the FBI that the calls were made to get help in stopping rival Dallas clubs from using amateur strippers. Would the Mr Bigs of crime really trouble their unpretty heads with dime-undercutting strippers?

  An argument against Mafia culpability is that the JFK assassination did not bear the hallmark of Mafia hits, which tend to be up close and personal; if the Mob did kill Kennedy then it must have hired a trained military marksman, possibly someone in or on the dissident fringes of the CIA, with whom the Mob had cooperated in attempted assassinations of Castro. Someone like Oswald. Legacy of Secrecy’s contention is that Oswald probably thought he was part of the coup plan against Castro but he was actually being set up by Marcello’s goons to be the fall guy when the hit on the president went down in Dallas. When Oswald said he was a patsy he meant it.

  An added twist to the Mob theory is given by Mark North in Act of Treason, in which he claims that Marcello tipped off J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI in 1962 that the assassination was being planned. Hoover, who despised Kennedy’s civil rights agenda, intentionally sat on the information and let JFK die.

  There is no shortage of other possible, within reason, culprits. The Freemasons (antipathetic to JFK’s Catholicism), Jackie Kennedy (embarrassed and ashamed by her husband’s affairs), Richard Nixon (desiring revenge for his defeat in the 1960 presidential election) and the Israelis (in anger at JFK’s use of Project Paperclip Nazi scientists in his nuclear programme and his opposition to theirs) have all had their fifteen minutes of infamy as the suspected sponsors of the hit. A remarkable number – more than thirty – hoodlums, policemen and government agents have all stepped into the limelight to claim that they pulled the trigger on 22 November 1963, and for a while the diary entry of Dallas policeman Roscoe White, in which he detailed the murder, had many convinced – until it was proven to be a forgery.

  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

  www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu

  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:
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br />   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 actua
lly 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.

  The second case, the fatal shooting of a well-known businessman, Sol Landie, in Kansas City, Mo., on 22 November 1970, involved the recruitment, through several intermediaries, of four young Black men by members of the local La Cosa Nostra family. Landie had served as a witness in a Federal investigation of gambling activities directed by Kansas City organized crime leader Nicholas Civella. The men recruited for the murder did not know who had ultimately ordered the killing, were not part of the Kansas City syndicate, and had received instructions through intermediaries to make it appear that robbery was the motive for the murder. All of the assailants and two of the intermediaries were ultimately convicted.

  The third case, the shooting of New York underworld leader Joseph Columbo before a crowd of 65,000 people in June 1971, was carried out by a young Black man with a petty criminal record, a nondescript loner who appeared to be alien to the organized crime group that had recruited him through various go-betweens. The gunman was shot to death immediately after the shooting of Columbo, a murder still designated as unsolved. (Seriously wounded by a shot to the head, Columbo lingered for years in a semiconscious state before he died in 1978.)