by David Wayne
Now let’s look at some of the scenarios out there. Many theories exist for the real cause of the JFK assassination—and many can be easily dismissed as implausible. For example, the Russians being involved makes absolutely no sense whatsoever—if anything, they were actively involved in attempting to thwart the assassination (see The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell). The Soviets knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had much better political prospects with JFK remaining President. They were in the throws of enduring severe economic hardships as a result of the costs of the Cold War and were eager for continuing the softening of those pressures that the Kennedy Administration was offering in the post Cuban Missile Crisis environment.
Here are some others:
Oswald Acted Alone
The theory that Oswald killed JFK is exactly that—a theory, and a preposterous one at that. It has been touted in books by The Warren Commission, Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi. They are what we call “conspiracy-closers”; they’re like closing pitchers in baseball games who come in to try to slam the door shut on the opposition. They have an agenda. They typically “begin” by concluding that Oswald acted alone, rather than objectively weighing all of the evidence. The evidence, objectively evaluated in its totality, indicates that it wasn’t even possible that Oswald acted alone. If that isn’t clear by now then, Homework Assignment: read the JFK chapter of this book.
Mafia “Hit”
“The minute that bullet hit Jack Kennedy’s head, it was all over. Right then. The Organized Crime Program just stopped, and Hoover took control back.”271
—Bill Hundley, Organized Crime Section, U.S. Dept. of Justice
The word on the streets of Chicago in 1963 was that if Chuck Nicoletti got a contract with your name on it, you were already dead—you just didn’t know it yet. Charles (Chuck) Nicoletti was the premier hit man in the 1950s and 60s for “Chicago”—the Organized Crime empire stretching across the nation and dominating most organized criminal enterprises in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami Beach.
It has been established that Nicoletti was in Dallas with a high-powered rifle on the morning of the assassination.272 In his “work book,” a professional calendar of sorts, Nicoletti reportedly made the following entry for November 22, 1963, chilling in its stark simplicity:
“Dallas—JFK”273
Few Americans are fully aware of the dramatic findings of the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded:
“There is solid evidence that ... Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante— three of the most important targets for criminal prosecution by the Kennedy Administration—had discussions with their subordinates about murdering President Kennedy. Associates of Hoffa, Trafficante, and Marcello were in direct contact with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the ‘lone assassin’ of the President. Although members of the Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy’s assassination, had knowledge of much of this information at the time of their inquiry, they chose not to follow it up.”274
The preceding conclusion is practically an open indictment of the main investigative body of the assassination of the 35th President of the United States. That bears noting.
CONFESSIONS REGARDING THE MURDER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
“Their own confessions now show that three Mafia bosses—Car-los Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli—were behind JFK’s assassination. They used parts of the secret coup plan to kill JFK in a way that forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and high CIA official Richard Helms to withhold crucial information not only from the public and the press, but also from each other and sometimes their own investigators.”275
The following conversation took place between Florida godfather Santo Traf- ficante and his friend and Miami businessman, Jose Aleman, shortly before the assassination of President Kennedy:
TRAFFICANTE: “ ... have you seen how his brother is hitting Hoffa ... mark my word, this man Kennedy is in trouble and will get what is coming to him.”
JOSE ALEMAN: “Kennedy will be re-elected.”
TRAFFICANTE: “You don’t understand me. Kennedy’s not going to make it to the election. He is going to be hit.”276
Government wiretaps and Mafia informants have provided detailed confessions of direct involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.
•“Recently declassified FBI documents confirm that just a few years before his own death, Carlos Marcello confessed on three occasions to informants that he had had JFK killed.”277
•“Santo Trafficante had been recruited in the CIA’s plots to kill Castro months before JFK became president. Like Marcello, Trafficante later confessed his involvement in JFK’s assassination.”278
•“Johnny Roselli, according to his biographers, also claimed to know what really happened in Dallas ... Internal CIA reports admit that they recruited Roselli and Trafficante for their own plots to assassinate Castro prior to JFK’s election in I960.”279
Confessions of involvement in the JFK assassination came in later years from Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Johnny Roselli, John Martino and David Morales. Deliberate misinformation that was planted to link the assassination to Cuba was also traced to the above-named.
Carlos Marcello: Marcello stated: “I had the little son-of-a-bitch killed, and I’d do it again ... I wish I could have done it myself.”280 (spoken to FBI informant; FBI Document 124-10182-10430)
Santo Trafficante: Trafficante stated: “Carlos fucked up. We should not have killed John. We should have killed Bobby.”281 (deathbed statement to his attorney; spoken in Sicilian)
Santo Trafficante: Mafia figures who were scheduled to talk to investigating committees add up to another bit of circumstantial evidence that is not easy to ignore. When Sam Giancana was found shot to death with five bullet holes around his mouth, Santos Trafficante said, “Now there are only two people who know who shot Kennedy. And they aren’t talking.”282 (spoken telephonically on FBI wiretap in 1975, after the murder of Sam Giancana)
David Morales: “Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?”283(spoken to associates, during a drunken rant on JFK)
John Martino: Confessed to his role in the organizational involvement of the JFK assassination (on several occasions to family members and also to two friends, shortly before his death).284
Johnny Roselli: “Before he died, Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged President Kennedy’s murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro.”285(Jack Anderson; Washington Post; September 9, 1976; cited by: Louis Stokes, House Select Committee on Assassinations; September 28, 1978)
Joe Granata: Granata was a credible FBI informant and close associate of notorious Chicago Mafia hit man Chuck Nicoletti. Granata testified that Nico- letti confessed to him, on several occasions, the direct involvement of Nicoletti, Johnny Roselli, Jimmy Sutton (a.k.a. James Files) and Marshal Caifano in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.286 It should be added that Roselli’s role would almost certainly not have been as an actual shooter—he was known as “Handsome Johnny” and renowned for being a charmer, not a killer—however the story apparently evolved into that over the years, as Mafia folklore has the habit of doing.
Frank Sheeran: Sheeran was a well-known Mafia hit man. He made deathbed confessions in 2004 that he and Jimmy Hoffa provided high-powered rifles for the Kennedy assassination and that Hoffa confessed to him that he had direct knowledge of high-level Mafia involvement in the murder.287
Frank Fiorini a.k.a. Frank Sturgis: “We did Watergate because Nixon wanted to stop the leakage of information on our role in the assassination of Kennedy.”288
CIA Coup
The most common theory—”The CIA Did It”—is problematic because it contains several flaws in reasoning—and the most common reason contains the most fallacious reasoning. As it’s often stated: The CIA
(therefore, the Government) had to have done it because only the Government could have covered it up. That almost sounds logical, until we fully examine the premises and conclusion of the equation.
For openers, one person who was instrumental in the cover-up was none other than Robert F. Kennedy. The acts of Robert Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the assassination clearly reveal a pattern in which he was actually a primary player in the construction of the cover-up.
It’s an often overlooked fact that the most powerful person in the United States on the afternoon of November 22, 1963 was actually not the newly sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson. He had not yet fully taken the reins of power. It was Robert F. Kennedy. Johnson, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, was basically a figurehead. Allegiance, as well as real authority, was rested in the Attorney General. While President Kennedy was alive, it was often commented that the Administration was really like a “dual-Presidency”—one in which RFK shared as much of the real power and responsibility as JFK. At the moment that President Kennedy was assassinated, true rank-and-file allegiance immediately shifted, by default, from President Kennedy to Attorney General Kennedy.
So what was Robert Kennedy actually doing on the afternoon of November 22 and afterward? Drastic actions were afoot:
•We know that he contacted a “security agent” whom he knew he could trust: CIA operative Hugh Huggins, who immediately boarded a jet, personally attended the autopsy, and reported directly to Bobby Kennedy.289
•We know that he immediately registered recognition of the name “Oswald” and called a contact in the anti-Castro camp in Florida, yelling into the telephone: “One of your guys did it!”290
•We know that he quickly called the Director of the CIA, screaming into the telephone: “Did the CIA kill my brother?!”291
•And we know that it was Bobby Kennedy’s very own Attorney General’s Office which actually originated the coverup, via the memo from staunch Kennedy ally Nick Katzenbach.
Bobby Kennedy called the CIA Director:
“Bobby said that ‘at the time’ of JFK’s death, he ‘asked (CIA Director John) McCone . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.’ This statement is important, because Bobby said he asked McCone ‘at the time’ JFK died, meaning something about JFK’s murder made him quickly suspect that the CIA might have been involved.
Second, how could Bobby ask McCone ‘in a way that he couldn’t lie to me’ unless there was some particular operation both men knew about? Clearly, Bobby was asking McCone if a plan meant for Castro had been used on his brother instead . Bobby Kennedy also said that ‘McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.’”292
RFK registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name:
Robert Kennedy registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name because he knew that Oswald was a component of the anti-Castro operations which RFK headed.
According to recent research:
“Oswald was one of ten dossiers given to RFK to assassinate Castro.”293
“‘Alba’s sources for this information’ included ‘John Rice of the Secret Service (who parked his car in Alba’s garage)’. Alba’s ‘sources also told him that after the assassination, RFK was seen in the Justice Department wailing, ‘I’ve killed my own brother!’”294
Historian John Simkin makes a very astute observation:
“One thing that has always puzzled me is the behavior of Robert Kennedy after the assassination. It must have been clear within hours of it happening that his brother had been killed by the Mafia with the support of rogue elements in the CIA and FBI. Yet, rather than calling for a full investigation into this possibility, he even took measures that attempted to cover up the conspiracy (taking control of the brain and autopsy X-rays that showed he had been hit in the front as well as in the back) ... John F. Kennedy did not in fact order an end to Executive Action. What he tried to do was to bring it under his own control. The plan to assassinate Fidel Castro now became known as Operation Freedom and was to be run by his brother Robert Kennedy ... Now consider the reaction of Robert Kennedy to the news that the man he had arranged to kill Castro had killed his brother. Any full investigation of Oswald and the Kennedy assassination would reveal details of Operation Freedom. What (the conspirators) had cleverly done was to implicate Robert Kennedy into the killing of his brother. He could now be guaranteed to join in the cover-up.”295
The fact that Oswald was manipulated into the tangled web of the JFK plot, assured that no official investigation ever could be made into his identity. Alarm bells went off all over Washington the moment that Oswald’s name was mentioned because, those in a position to know, knew that U.S. intelligence had been seriously compromised. As some researchers conclude:
“The rifle fire in Dallas that killed John F. Kennedy didn’t just start a frantic effort to find his assassins. JFK’s murder also launched a flurry of covert actions by officials like Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Helms to hide the fact that the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba as part of a JFK-authorized coup only ten days away. The plan’s exposure could have cost the life of JFK’s coup leader, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, and led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.”296
Therefore, in the eyes of many in the JFK research community, the assassination was clearly a double-edged sword that was also a provocation for war:
“The assassination of President Kennedy was, to put it simply, an anti- Castro’provocation’, an act designed to be blamed on Castro to justify a punitive American invasion of the island. Such action would most clearly benefit the Mafia chieftains who had lost their gambling holdings in Havana because of Castro, and CIA agents who had lost their credibility with the Cuban exile freedom fighters from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.”297
The dark “beauty” of the “black op” that killed President Kennedy was that—by its very nature—it forced the victims to cover up the crime. Why else would Robert Kennedy have been handcuffed? He was still the Attorney General of the United States with a vast army of investigators at his disposal. Yet he refused to investigate the murder of his own brother. President Johnson did not handcuff Robert Kennedy—the Attorney General was free to pursue his tasks as he saw fit. His actions were handcuffed by the very nature of the operation which took JFK’s life.
It should also be noted that RFK personally blamed Carlos Marcello for his brother’s death, and that was something that Bobby confided to several associates.298
As we mentioned in the Marilyn Monroe chapter, there is an unfortunate tendency among researchers to divide into what they consider “pro-Kennedy” and “anti-Kennedy camps.” The resulting polarization creates a type of “block” among some in the research community, who seem to be in denial that the Kennedy brothers (John and Robert) had extramarital affairs (both clearly did), and that Robert Kennedy was present at the home of Marilyn Monroe on the day of her death (which he clearly was). In much the same manner, many researchers divide into camps on the JFK assassination, the most popular of which is that “the CIA did it.” The problem is that, as a result, at least to some in the JFK research community, anything that suggests less than a total belief in the theory that the CIA “did it” tends to be perceived as somehow less than respectful to the Kennedy legacy.
The above notion is both mistaken and misinformed. Genuine research does not color itself according to political alliances; it simply follows wher-ever the evidence truly leads. The fact of the matter is that collectively, the CIA couldn’t order a pizza—they are a huge organization composed of thousands of individuals of myriad factions and persuasions.
Instead, when we analyze both pre- and post-assassination actions, what we see is a clear pattern of CIA action (as an agency) that is in opposition to the plots to kill JFK.
The CIA Almost Went Public:
CIA veteran Victor Marchetti, for
mer Executive Assistant to Deputy Director, CIA, in the book he co-authored, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, exposed an astonishing revelation of which he had direct knowledge:
“ ... at one time the CIA Director considered a public admission that some CIA field agents had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.”299
Logic demands, however, that we realize that the converse of that is then also true; the CIA, as an agency, did not actively plan the assassination. That’s why they actually considered “going public” about the actions of several agents (here, those who mistakenly consider themselves Kennedy “loyalists” would point out the intelligence technique known as a “limited hangout”—but that’s an inappropriate attachment to the aforementioned point because there was clearly no need to go public). We also know that because, rather than smashing the conspiracy that killed his brother, Robert Kennedy used his office as Attorney General of the United States in 1963 to cover up that conspiracy.
CIA officer Victor Marchetti and others in a position to know such as David Atlee Phillips, also gave their personal opinions that although rogue agents were involved, the CIA itself (“as an agency”) was not to blame for the assassination.
Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti made it clear in his work and his writing that he cared deeply about divulging the truth to the American people on intelligence matters. Yet he astutely adds:
