Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  On March 1, 1969, two years after Shaw’s arrest, the jury quickly wrapped up the six-week trial. It took all of 45 minutes to reach a not-guilty verdict for Shaw. A juror said later that they could have taken half the time, except that several of the jurors had to use the bathroom.

  In many ways, however, Clay Shaw lost. “I had planned my retirement so carefully,” Shaw wrote in his diary. “This case will change all that.” Indeed it would. His legal fees bankrupted him of his life savings—$200,000—and the accusations left him emotionally devastated. Like many others before him, Clay Shaw filed an abuse-of-office suit against Garrison. But in 1974, before it could come to trial, Shaw died of cancer.

  In 1971, Garrison and nine others were indicted by federal prosecutors for accepting bribes to protect illegal pinball machine gambling, believed controlled by mobster Carlos Marcello. Garrison’s nine alleged accomplices either pled guilty or turned states’ evidence for a plea bargain. But once again, Garrison’s popularity saw him through. When the case came to trial in 1972, Garrison conducted his own defense and the jury found him, and him alone, not guilty.

  In the years that followed, Garrison was buoyed by supporters who found two 1949 photos of Shaw with a group of men dressed for Mardi Gras. One of the men in the photos, the supporters claimed, was Dave Ferrie. Although Garrison knew it wasn’t, he told no one. When Garrison’s personal papers were opened in 1997, a copy of the photos had captions with names. The “Ferrie” individual was in fact a fellow named Bob Brannon.

  The flamboyant D.A. went on to earn over $1 million for the use of his version of the Shaw story in the 1991 movie, “JFK.” Hollywood heartthrob Kevin Costner would give the overbearing, arrogant, and often obnoxious Garrison a quiet, Jimmy Stewart-type persona. Native New Orleaneans found the portrayal virtually unrecognizable.

  As for Garrison’s implication that Robert Kennedy was obstructing the investigation of his brother’s murder, only RFK himself would have believed it. It was true, but in a way Garrison could never have imagined.

  Bobby’s Next Volley: The LBJ/Marcello Connection

  “Here lies what remains of the man who stole everything.”

  —Jack Halfen’s proposed epitaph for his tombstone

  In his next offensive against President Johnson, Bobby Kennedy and his Senate aides tried to help a young investigative journalist revive an old payola scandal, the same alleged LBJ-mob link that had almost implicated Lyndon Johnson before JFK’s death. The allegations held the potential for linking Johnson to one of the most powerful Mafia families in the United States—the Carlos Marcello family of New Orleans. The conduit for this information was a colorful Marcello “bagman” named Jack Harold Halfen. Bobby Kennedy didn’t know it, but LBJ was aware of Kennedy’s gambit from its start.

  “In early 1968, I was researching a piece on LBJ for Ramparts magazine, which was in financial trouble,” remembers investigative journalist Mike Dorman.68 The article was to include an examination of Jack Halfen’s influential connections. Halfen was a legendary “confidence man” from Texas whose native intelligence for the scam, combined with polished discretion, promoted him through the ranks to (never-recognized) national importance. These traits enabled him to work his way up to the diplomatically delicate position of liaison between some of the country’s leading Mafia chiefs—Frank Costello and Vito Genovese in New York, Santos Trafficante in Florida and, most significantly, Carlos Marcello in New Orleans—and the politicians those chiefs needed to control. “The Big Fix,” as Halfen was known, became a reliable bagman who carefully paid key legislators for their services.

  Halfen’s disbursements totaled in the millions of dollars. They were for protecting Mafia-operated rackets, especially gambling. The Mafia gained government protection by paying off local and federal law enforcement, buying the decisions of local and state judges, and bribing legislators to oppose bills that sought to restrict or regulate gambling. In the late 1950’s, the payments escalated dramatically to stop or deflect Congressional investigations and hearings. The payments—some made on Capitol Hill, others in carefully-chosen hideaways—were in cash and disguised as campaign contributions.

  Both payers and payees trusted Jack Halfen with the extremely sensitive work of transferring the “compensation.” His self-cultivated intellect and discernment allowed him to move comfortably back and forth between the ordinarily disparate worlds of organized crime and statecraft. Mike Dorman believed Halfen was “perhaps the most accomplished payoff man organized crime has ever produced—the Johnny Appleseed of political corruption.” For many years, Mafia financing was crucial to many political campaigns. Sometimes, it was the deciding factor.

  Robert Kennedy first came to know Jack Halfen in 1961, as Attorney General, when he grew interested in rumors that Halfen could provide juicy material on Bobby’s nemesis, then-Vice-President Johnson. He even dispatched a DOJ investigator to visit him in prison when Bobby sought to leverage Johnson off the 1964 ticket. Reluctantly, Kennedy had to quash an initial federal investigation when wiretaps turned up indiscretions not only on Johnson’s part, but by important Democratic supporters of John Kennedy in New York and Indiana.69 (Halfen had his hooks into everyone.) Although the probe was halted, Bobby never forgot Jack Halfen. In 1968, with Jack dead, Bobby decided it was time to take a fresh look at the Halfen-Johnson linkage. In fact, it became one of his strategies for removing Johnson from the presidency.

  The appearance on the scene of Mike Dorman, already researching this Johnson-Halfen connection, was welcomed by the Senator from New York. Halfen had freely admitted to Dorman that he had “bought off” Senator Lyndon Johnson to look out for Marcello’s interests in federal gambling legislation. The pay-offs to Johnson, he would state, began well before he became the youngest Senate Majority Leader in history in 1954. Johnson’s campaigns to both the House and Senate, Halfen elaborated, benefited greatly from Mafia money—and he had documentary evidence to prove their connection.70 He had passed $100,000 a year—for ten years—to LBJ, he said.

  “In return,” says Mike Dorman, “Johnson helped kill in committee all anti-rackets and gambling legislation that could have harmed the interests of Carlos Marcello and Jack Halfen.”

  Soon, Dorman sought help in investigating Johnson’s legislative record, which, he figured, would dovetail if the allegations were true (they were, and it did). The young reporter had to look no farther for help than Robert Kennedy. “I was using Robert Kennedy’s aide Joe Dolan to research LBJ’s Congressional record with respect to Marcello’s interest in having LBJ kill gambling legislation,” remembers Dorman. Dorman received RFK’s personal attention, meeting with the Senator in his office. “Senator Kennedy was enthusiastic about the article,” Dorman says. At one point, Kennedy asked if he, Dorman, thought Ramparts would survive long enough to publish the article. Kennedy further wondered, “Do they have the balls to publish it?”

  Documents obtained from the LBJ Library in 1992 demonstrate that Johnson was aware of Bobby’s interest in his Halfen connection. One handwritten memo of a 1968 phone conversation (written by LBJ aide George Christian) states that the Johnson White House had read Dorman’s manuscript. Another memo asserts that the Kennedys helped Dorman write his book, Payoff, and that, as far as Halfen goes, “the Kennedys pushed him for info on LBJ.”71

  On March 31, 1968, as the Ramparts article went to press, LBJ announced that he would not seek re-election. It is generally agreed that the strain of Vietnam, and his perilous decline in the polls, precipitated the president’s decision. The impending Halfen disclosures in print certainly may have tipped the scales of an otherwise difficult choice. Johnson may have further decided that the sensational disclosure that Bobby Kennedy had inadvertently instigated his own brother’s demise paled in comparison to Johnson’s colorful Texan past.

  When the Ramparts article was published, the editors prefaced the piece by saying that they believed that “the disclosures in the following article warrant a federal criminal
investigation of Lyndon Johnson’s activities as a congressman and senator from Texas.” There was scant chance of that happening. One of those Halfen allegedly bribed was associate Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark,. Clark’s son, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was the man who would have had the job of investigating and prosecuting.

  Two months later, Robert Kennedy, like his beloved brother, was killed by an assassin’s bullet. Foreign policy advisor Walt Rostow called President Johnson with the news at 3:30 a.m. One of the earliest to propose a “professional” Cuba Project with a contingency plan “to eliminate the [Castro] regime by U.S. force” (April 24, 1961),”72 Rostow had also been a prime sponsor of General Lansdale’s White House appointment and, according to Richard Bissell, was aware of the ZR/RIFLE assassination project.

  In early June, twenty-seven minutes after the shooting, Johnson called Rostow back with questions. According to Johnson’s handwritten notes of the conversation, it is clear that the President, perhaps sparked by something Rostow said, was still consumed with the Cuban plots—perhaps he thought they had something to do with RFK’s death as well. The sketchy notes contain the following words: “Burke Marshall [the Kennedys’ lawyer]. . . Ed Morgan. . . Cosa Nostra. . . Send in to get Castro. . . Planning” (See photocopy at chapter’s end).73

  Robert Kennedy had lived just long enough to obtain a modicum of victory over Lyndon Johnson—he helped drive him from office. Bobby had also performed his duty of keeping the assassination plots, and the secrets of New Orleans and Mexico City, from surfacing.

  Bobby and Jack were much more than “brothers in arms.” They were brothers in fact, and Bobby performed his brotherly duties until his last breath. Robert Kennedy’s family now would be responsible for shielding the secrets he had spent his life concealing. Three years later, the real answers to the events of Dallas were further buried, with the death of Mexico City Station Chief, Win Scott. His files, which likely could have provided important pieces to the puzzle of John Kennedy’s murder, were soon spirited away, never to be seen again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MYTH UNRAVELS

  On April 26, 1971, Win Scott suffered a fatal heart attack while eating breakfast. Within the hour, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, caught a plane to Mexico City. Angleton, who had headed the CIA’s limited investigation of John Kennedy’s death (and who had overseen the Agency’s rehearsal with the FBI of its Warren Commission testimony), was not going to Mexico to pay his respects. His was a more urgent mission. Always suspicious of Oswald’s Mexico City contacts, Angleton left for Mexico City in such a mad dash that he neglected to take along his visa or passport, and was consequently delayed at Mexican Customs upon arrival.

  “He finally arrived pretending to be there for my father’s funeral,” recalls Michael Scott, Win’s son. “But he had really come to get at his files.” Angleton eventually admitted to the son that, among other things, he wanted the autobiographical manuscript that Scott had been writing. Angleton went so far as to warn a family member, “We have ways of getting it from you.” Angleton threatened, for instance, that the CIA would rescind plans for a plaque honoring Scott at CIA headquarters.1

  Family members recall that the CIA “loaded cratefuls of stuff” from Scott’s Mexico City study. A CIA team was dispatched to locate the Mexican woman who helped Scott type his manuscript, entitled Foul Foe. Scott’s widow, Janet, later stated that the CIA personnel also removed Scott’s most sensitive papers from his safe.2 This material, with one slight exception—half the manuscript — hasn’t surfaced since. The loss of the Scott files is a major blow to historians of the Kennedy assassination. Robert Krandle, a CIA aide to Scott in Mexico City, later testified that Scott maintained a “bulky but foolproof filing system.”3

  Theories abound regarding the contents of the Scott “cratefuls.” In Congressional testimony, CIA officers said that Scott possessed photographs and sound recordings of Oswald in Mexico City. A vigorous search was undertaken to locate where the photos and tapes of Oswald’s activities were stored. The CIA informed Congressional investigators that they had routinely destroyed the audio tapes prior to the assassination, and that their automatic “pulse” cameras were not in operation on the days of Oswald’s visits. The House Select Committee on Assassinations, however, obtained photos from the Cuban government showing the CIA’s cameras in operation at the time—the spies were indeed being spied upon.4 New research indicates that not only were photos taken of Oswald, but that the photos and tapes both survived for a number of years, and perhaps still do.

  The HSCA interviewed a number of CIA officers working at the Mexico City Embassy in 1963. Three of the officers claimed to have seen a photo of Oswald, and two others had heard of it.5 In 1994, Scott’s assistant station chief, and two Warren Commission attorneys, joined the chorus of those who had screened both the photos and tapes well after the assassination. The attorneys, William Coleman and David Slawson, told journalists Robbyn and Anthony Summers that they inspected the materials on a trip to Mexico City in the spring of 1964.

  Robbyn and Anthony Summers corroborated the Coleman/Slawson statement by interviewing the assistant station chief at the time, who “absolutely” remembered giving the attorneys the material from Scott.6 Coleman, in fact, remembered comparing the typed transcript of the Oswald tapes to the tapes themselves.7 It is widely believed that these were among the materials confiscated by Angleton, who, until his own death in 1987, championed the possibility of a Cuban conspiracy in Kennedy’s death.

  Rumors persist that the photos have been withheld because they show Oswald in the company of Cuban agents.8 After devoting thousands of man-hours to the search for the Oswald photos, the HSCA concluded: 1) “that it is probable that the camera was in operation on the days that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban Consulate,” 2) “It would have been unlikely for the photosurveillance operations to have missed ten opportunities to have photographed Oswald,” leading to 3) “A photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald was probably obtained by CIA photosurveillance in Mexico.”9 Three decades after the assassination, neither the tapes nor photos of Oswald have surfaced.

  However, thirty-two years after the event, the first serious crack appeared in the CIA’s wall of secrecy. On September 20, 1995, the CIA begrudgingly complied with the orders of the Clinton-appointed JFK Review Board to release everything in its vaults pertaining to the Kennedy murder, including Oswald’s Mexico City visit. The Board was the result of an uproar following the 1991 release of the movie “JFK,” which featured sensational charges of a government-based conspiracy. The Board was granted unprecedented powers to force all federal agencies to comply with its directive of total disclosure.

  In the 200-page September 1995 release of documents, two stand out. CIA memos dated December 10 and December 12, 1963, leave no room for doubt that the CIA inadvertently discovered copies of the Oswald “intercepts” after the assassination.

  When author Edward Epstein was approached in 1975 by Reader’s Digest to write an Oswald biography (Legend, 1978), the tape issue resurfaced. Epstein told writer Dick Russell that as an inducement to write the book, the Digests influential Washington Bureau senior editor, John Barron, promised him access to the “non-existent” recordings from Mexico City. Barron, a formal Naval Intelligence officer, was a close personal friend of (and literary agent for) Win Scott. In fact, Barron was in Mexico City visiting Scott when the CIA officer died in 1971, making the tape transfer at that time a distinct possibility. Epstein, however, was never given the promised recordings.10

  Considering that Scott was known to keep voluminous, yet meticulous files, the question is raised as to what chance there might be for the surveillance transcriptions to be stored with his missing papers. In addition to the afore-mentioned Scott aide (Robert Krandle), both CIA security specialist “John Scelso” (pseudonym), and former officer Phillip Agee have pointed out the importance of the material missing from Scott’s filing system, which they termed “legenda
ry.”

  In the late 1970s, the CIA released a copy of Scott’s manuscript (a highly-sanitized autobiography of his entire intelligence career) to a Congressional investigation. One chapter is devoted to Oswald and Mexico City. Two points are of interest. First, it is clear by Scott’s admissions that Oswald’s “missing days” were probably not missing after all. Scott wrote: “Because we thought at first that Lee Harvey Oswald might be a dangerous potential defector from the USA to the Soviet Union, he was of great interest to us, so we kept a special watch on him and his activities.”11

  As to the Oswald photo, Scott stated firmly that “persons watching these embassies photographed Oswald as he entered and left each one, and clocked the time spent on each visit.” But not one scrap of paper has surfaced from this surveillance.12

  Scott’s conclusion about the assassination is stated in the form of a rhetorical question:

  Aren’t the contacts made in Mexico by Lee Harvey Oswald in the five day period he had in that city and what took place during his visits to and conversations with communist embassies in September-October 1963, quite enough to cause a suspicion of Soviet involvement in the murder of President Kennedy?13

  Though distinctly a minority view, potential Soviet involvement is not inconsistent with at least one key fact. Cuban intelligence agents were trained, of all places, in Minsk, where Oswald once lived.

  1972: The Game is Up

  Another Washington notable also became interested in the important untold story of American-Cuban intrigue during the Kennedy years. Like Johnny Rosselli and Sam Giancana years earlier, this individual also hoped to parlay his knowledge of the “hidden history” to avoid criminal prosecution. In 1972, President Richard Nixon clearly needed some leverage.