Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  According to deposition testimony he supplied the FBI, former Havana casino operator Norman Rothman participated in clandestine meetings, arranged by RFK, inside the White House, where Rothman’s possible assistance in providing Cuban-based contacts was explored. Initially, Rothman had been in touch with the Justice Department in an effort to avoid a prison term for a gun-running conviction. At the time, he informed the FBI that he had “considerable knowledge concerning the Cuban underground.” When the summary report passed RFK’s desk, he wrote on it, “press rigorously all angles.” Two days later (June 26, 1961), according to the FBI, Rothman was again interviewed “at the request of the Attorney General.” He now indicated that “he was in a position to procure the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” The offer was forwarded to Bobby Kennedy’s Deputy Attorney General, Byron White (JFK’s longtime friend and later a Kennedy appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court). Soon, Rothman was invited to the White House.

  At a White House gathering, attended by both RFK aide John Seigenthaler and JFK’s Congressional Liaison, Henry Hall Wilson, the subjects of Castro’s assassination and leniency for Rothman were broached. Both Wilson and Rothman’s attorney, Harry Riddle, were close friends of JFK buddy, Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. This suggests a possible mechanism for how Rothman came to the attention of the White House in the first place.

  Thereafter, Rothman began receiving mysterious telegrams summoning him back to the White House for a series of meetings. Pleading poor memory, Rothman told later investigators that someone brought up the subject of assassination in a “casual way,” but he forgot the exact wording.73 Given Rothman’s history and bravado, such a topic of conversation would not be surprising. Rothman had been linked to a pre-Kennedy assassination plot (on Castro) and to the formation of a mob spy network in Cuba. Recall also that Charles Siragusa, who admitted helping form an assassination squad, was known to have met with Bobby in his office, where the subject had also been Cuba. Siragusa later became a very close friend of Robert Kennedy. According to mutual friend Constantine Kangles, a Chicago-based attorney, who knew Fidel Castro, he and Siragusa were called into private meetings with Bobby in the Attorney General’s office to discuss Cuba.

  In Rothman’s Congressional testimony, he provided some details about his trips to the White House and the Attorney General’s office. Although Bobby didn’t attend the meetings, his aides escorted Rothman:

  [We went] to the Attorney General’s office, and then from there to a big conference room. . .[Bobby’s] wife or some member of his family was hanging pictures. They must have just moved into the office. . . . They started off by saying. . . that they would be helpful to me [with the appeal]. . . . They asked me if I would help them. . . or if I wished to become a part of some group in the government in establishing communications in Cuba—contacts. I told them that I was not interested in helping myself. . .I was not interested in discussing anything. . . They sent me another telegram after that. [Again he was brought to Bobby’s office.] They wanted me to give them names and I refused to do it. . . One of them approached me and discussed what method [of assassination] I would suggest if it were me. . . . I told them I was at no liberty to involve others with them. . . I do not think we got along in our discussion, and the matter more or less dropped, on my part.74

  Rothman’s links to Bobby, however, weren’t confined to meetings in Washington. Recently, another RFK/Rothman link surfaced.

  When Bobby Kennedy visited southern Florida, one of his exile bodyguards was a young Cuban named Angelo (who later adopted the last name of “Kennedy” as an homage to the brothers’ concern for the exiles’ plight.) Only recently has Angelo agreed to be interviewed. With much reluctance, Angelo divulged that on more than one occasion, he accompanied Bobby to the Star Island (Miami) home of a “fat cat from up north.” Angelo conceded that “We knew there was something wrong with this guy—Mafia maybe.” When pushed for the name, Angelo initially declined to answer. Eventually, he gave up the name “Normie Ross.”75 It took all of five minutes to learn from another Miami resident that “Normie Ross” was the name often used by Star Island resident Norman Rothman.76

  In still another attempt to jumpstart the plots, the Kennedys again went around “official” controls, seeking out an old family friend with a similar grudge against the Cuban dictator.

  Michael McLaney

  “I liked old man Joe Kennedy,” said renowned sports hustler/casino operator Mike McLaney. “We used to golf together two or three times a week at the Palm Beach Country Club.”77 McLaney also played golf with President John F. Kennedy. And he met Bobby “many times,” though he was quick to add that, of the Kennedy clan, Bobby was “the only one I didn’t like.”

  McLaney, in fact, had known Joe Kennedy so long that he no longer remembers exactly how they met, but was sure it had something to do with golf. McLaney’s longtime right-hand man “Steve Reynolds” (pseudonym) remembers McLaney being introduced originally to Joe Kennedy at the Palm Beach Country Club by one of Joe’s few Jewish friends, Carroll Rosenbloom, the controversial Baltimore Colts football owner. “Joe, Jack, and Bobby used to sit with Mike on the veranda, where they could have private conversations,” recalls Reynolds.78 (Mike McLaney and Joe Kennedy were part of a clique of golf-playing Irishmen in Florida.)

  Reynolds added, “If you want to understand the Kennedys and Cuba, think about how Mike [McLaney] got involved with the casino. Then investigate Joe Kennedy’s days in Hollywood.” Reynolds refused to elaborate. The trail, however, leads to Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Johnny Rosselli, all of whom traveled in the same circles as Joe Kennedy when he was a Hollywood player. Joe Kennedy, among other things, had helped to form RKO Pictures.

  McLaney told Congressional investigators in 1978 (withheld until 1997) how he had known Joe Kennedy since the early 1950’s, and had visited the family’s Palm Beach estate. “I had drinks at the home. . . I liked the President very much. I thought Bobby was a mess, but the President I thought was a very nice human being, a very warm and likeable human being.”79 The investigators felt it wasn’t necessary to pursue the nature of McLaney’s relationship with the Kennedys, though it was clear they weren’t merely discussing their latest golf scores. McLaney even teased them with the admission that he presented his operational ideas to JFK’s friend, George Smathers. Still, the Congressional investigators didn’t take the bait. When asked what the topic of conversation had been, Reynolds, who accompanied Mike to the Kennedy estate, pointed towards Cuba.

  In a rare interview, just prior to his death from Parkinson’s Disease, McLaney for the first time related the details of a series of anti-Castro operations, undertaken with the blessing of the Kennedy patriarch and his sons. McLaney was a player in pre-Castro Cuba who had the firepower and the moxie to launch his own raids against the dictator. He was one of the big losers wanting back in, and the Kennedys needed all the help they could get. Tragically, the McLaney liaison would be the first of a number of unofficial operations whose scope would become known to, and inspire, Lee Harvey Oswald.

  The story of Mike McLaney is the stuff of movies. A born athlete, he did a brief stint as a deputy sheriff in New Orleans before deciding to cash in on his real talents, golf and tennis. As a young tennis player, McLaney was the Louisiana state champion eight years running. He won the national amateur doubles tennis championship in 1962 with Gardner Mulloy, proudly displaying for the author the inscribed pewter plate to prove it. He numbered among his friends tennis great Bobby Riggs, and many players on the men’s pro golf and tennis tours.

  As to why McLaney did not turn pro during the 1950’s and 1960’s, his longtime caddy, Larry Murphey, makes the answer quite clear, “Do you know what the pros made winning tournaments in those days? We made that much [hustling amateurs] on the first hole.”80 Mike McLaney’s decision to hustle golf proved a smart one. He made a fortune on the links: “I once took [NFL owner] Carroll Rosenbloom for a quarter million on one round,” he remembers. He amassed en
ough capital to place him in contact with the kind of operators able to help him realize his dream of owning his own casino. With the permission of the legendary mob financial whiz Meyer Lansky (the mob’s man in Cuba), McLaney purchased a huge share of the 450-room Hotel Nacional Casino in Havana. In doing so, he became partners with Baltimore Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom. “He [Rosenbloom] was a killer at heart. Everybody who did business with him hated him,” remembered McLaney in 1994.

  The Nacional was a regular watering hole for members of the crime syndicates from Chicago and New York. The casino had been purchased by McLaney and Rosenbloom in September 1958, but by the spring of 1959, the new leader, “El Maximo Lider” Fidel Castro, had nationalized the Nacional—incredibly bad timing for Mike McLaney.81 Lansky was banished from the island, and some operators, including McLaney, were imprisoned for a time. What made it even worse for McLaney was that he had sold his stock in Universal Controls (a conglomerate that included American Totalizator racetrack computers and Seven Arts Motion Picture Company) to finance his purchase of the casino. The arrangement had been that, should things go wrong, he could buy the stock back, but the stockholders, among them McLaney’s former partner and hustling “mark” Carroll Rosenbloom, reneged. In short, McLaney may have been as upset about Cuba as the sons of his golfing buddy, Papa Joe Kennedy.

  Along with his former Nacional lieutenant, Sam Benton, Mike McLaney constantly concocted schemes for launching attacks on Castro. Benton provided liaison with the Cuban exiles. “Benton knew Bobby Kennedy too,” says anti-Castro activist Gerry Hemming. “Bobby sent him up and down the east coast in a sting operation involving a stolen securities fraud investigation being run by the Justice Department,” says Hemming.82 McLaney had explosives experts at the ready; he had private planes lined up, prepared to drop bombs on the Cuban oil refineries. One would think that Mike McLaney would get a call from his fellow Irishmen. In the year following the Bay of Pigs defeat, he did.

  Steve Reynolds was a witness to meetings held with his boss Mike McLaney at Joe Kennedy’s Palm Beach compound. “They were all there—Joe, Bobby, the President,” says Reynolds. “It was when the Cuba thing really started to get going. Mike operated as a go-between for the White House and the Cuban exiles.” Reynolds says the talk was of “getting rid” of Castro. It was made clear to McLaney that the Kennedys would be most appreciative if Castro was “taken out.” As Reynolds recalls it, “We could have had him [Castro] killed in 10 minutes. But Mike was against it. He knew it would destroy the White House if it got out. Mike favored harassment.” McLaney’s feelings about assassination were to change, perhaps after continued prodding from Washington.

  Eventually, McLaney’s plans for bombing the Esso, Shell, and Texaco refineries in Cuba got back to the oil companies. Pressure was immediately exerted to stop him. The oil companies were hoping to recoup the refineries intact after Castro fell. Columnist Jack Anderson wrote that McLaney got an urgent phone call warning him to call the refinery raids off.83 However, Gerry Hemming was told differently. “It was a face to face meeting in Miami Beach. And it was with Robert Kennedy. Three of my close associates were there. [Hemming’s mercenary unit ran security for various anti-Castro groups.] It took place on the houseboat that was used in an old TV series in the Surfside area, near where McLaney lived. Bobby was thrusting his index finger into McLaney’s chest telling him to stay away from the refineries.”84 Steve Reynolds, McLaney’s aide, was present, and corroborated the confrontation with Bobby. “The houseboat was owned by Mike,” says Reynolds, “and he had it docked at the Kingston Hotel in Vista Park, where the meeting took place. The boat was used in the TV show ‘Surfside Six.’ Bobby Kennedy was there all right. The gist of his remarks was that the refineries would be needed in the post-Castro period.”85

  Mike McLaney, before he died in 1994, consistently cut off all conversation when it turned to his possible involvement in the assassination plots against Castro. However, explosives expert Ed Arthur leaves little doubt about what happened. Arthur told former FBI man-turned author Bill Turner in 1974 that a McLaney lieutenant, Sam Benton, whom he had recently met, took him to McLaney’s house in Miami Beach to discuss a “lucrative assignment” with a man who looked exactly like Mike McLaney, who lived in the house listed to him, and whom he would later positively identify as McLaney from a photo.

  At the house, McLaney offered Arthur $90,000 to assassinate Fidel Castro. “We have access to an airplane and 500 pound bombs and other munitions. What about flying over the Presidential Palace and dropping bombs?” McLaney asked. As they drove off, Benton offered Arthur one other inducement: the assassination project “had the approval of certain well-connected people in Washington,” he said. Arthur backed out of the assignment when he realized it would link him to the syndicate-owned clubs in Havana.

  In the months prior to his death, McLaney claimed not to remember the Kennedys’ request to kill Fidel Castro. However, Steve Reynolds, who is said by his associates to have a photographic memory is adamant that the request was made. A clue to McLaney’s apparent memory loss may reside in a statement he gave to former FBI agent Bill Turner in 1974. Turner wrote:

  McLaney did not see the wisdom of talking about other aspects of his campaign against Castro. “They have long memories up in Washington,” the gambler said, “and they might not recognize that the statute of limitations has run out.”86

  McLaney, in his Congressional testimony of 1978, did hint at who had signed off on his operation. Whenever the FBI threatened his anti-Castro activities, his boys used this standard response:

  Oh, we got the money from a fellow by the name of “John” from the CIA and he said Bobby Kennedy gave it to him. So they would call back and they would ask Bobby Kennedy, or whoever was on the other end of the phone. Then everybody would faint and they would run out of the place. There was no charges for nothing because they did not want the publicity of Bobby Kennedy.87

  Finally, in 1997, Steve Reynolds offered information that left no doubt as to who had approved the plots:

  After the ceremony at the Orange Bowl [in Miami, during December 1962], President Kennedy stopped by Mike’s house while I was there. Kennedy was staying at the Fontainebleau, and Mike lived right across Indian Creek—within view of the hotel. Kennedy merely told his driver to take a left instead of a right. Mike and Jack went to sit on the back patio, where they were joined by an emissary of Sam Giancana’s. They spoke for about twenty minutes.88

  Asked if the emissary was Johnny Rosselli, Reynolds would merely say, “No comment.”

  Before McLaney had a falling-out with Rosenbloom, and strains were put on his relationship with the Kennedys,89 the Kennedys, according to Reynolds, performed one favor for him. Planning another assault against Fidel in the summer of 1963, Mike McLaney stored some explosives at the summer cottage of his brother William on Lake Ponchartrain near New Orleans. When the FBI raided the cottage, some saw it as a Kennedy crackdown on rogue hoodlums—hoodlums later considered “suspects” in the Kennedy assassination. The FBI, however, took pains at the time to deny the raid, and when no one was ever charged or even arrested, locals became suspicious. Reynolds makes it clear why nothing happened, “The Kennedys took care of it. They were aware of that operation from the start.”

  As will be seen, the FBI’s raid on the cottage was front page news in New Orleans. And there is strong evidence to indicate that a pro-Castro agitator named Lee Harvey Oswald read all about it.

  Bobby’s First Coverup

  Meanwhile, the FBI’s seemingly omniscient director, J. Edgar Hoover, had used his own channels to learn of the Sheffield Edwards/Johnny Rosselli Phase One plots against Castro. In 1961, Sam Giancana, the Chicago mafia boss, hired Robert Maheu to wiretap Giancana’s girlfriend Phyllis McGuire, of the McGuire Sisters, whom he suspected of infidelity with the comedian Dan Rowan. Hoover had been trying to make a case against the Las Vegas mob—which coincidentally included Maheu and Rosselli. In April 1961, after Maheu was cau
ght in the act of wiretapping, the FBI finally spoke with Maheu, who told them that he was working with the CIA on the anti-Castro plots, leaking this information beyond the Agency for the first time.

  Hoover was furious that his investigation was complicated by this relationship between the CIA and the mob. He demanded an explanation from the CIA. On May 3, 1961, Sheffield Edwards admitted to Hoover that Maheu was right, and gave Hoover details of the operation. Bissell was said to be shocked that Edwards revealed so much to Hoover.90 On May 21st, Hoover dashed off a memo to Bobby Kennedy detailing Edwards’ report on the plots. Hoover evidently felt it necessary to protect himself by getting something on the record. Significantly, there is no record that RFK did anything about the plots after receiving the Hoover memo. The FBI’s liaison to the CIA, Sam Pappich, would tell a future Congressional investigator that the Bureau kept Bobby Kennedy advised on what it knew of the CIA/mob operations. According to Pappich, Kennedy’s reaction was not one of disapproval, but that he “was concerned that this operation would become known, and [he] didn’t want it to get out.”91

  If Robert Kennedy wanted to stop the plotting, he had more than ample opportunity. He was in almost daily contact with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Between April 22 and May 30, 1961, Kennedy met with Dulles at least 21 times (on the record). At the time, they were overseeing the Taylor Board of Inquiry into the Bay of Pigs defeat. For his part, Hoover kept after the Las Vegas crowd, and in one year he gathered information from Nevada that could incriminate not only the mob, but the Kennedys as well.

  In the winter of 1962, Hoover’s continuing surveillance of Johnny Rosselli produced big dividends. In the process of monitoring Rosselli’s acquaintances, the FBI came across Judith Campbell, also a friend of Sam Giancana. In a routine trace, shocked FBI agents learned that one recipient of her numerous calls was none other than President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The President’s philandering, of which Hoover was already aware, had finally caught up with him. As Vice President Lyndon Johnson remarked to a Time magazine reporter, “J. Edgar Hoover has Jack Kennedy by the balls.”92