The Man Who Killed Kennedy Read online

  “I do not wish to be the head of an organization of potential blackmailers,” Hoover said regarding wiretapping. In truth, however, he had compiled many of his secret files especially for the purpose of blackmail to retain power. Particular to Hoover’s blackmailing repertoire were character flaws of a prurient nature. Hoover kept records on operators such as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Hoover suspected of many sexual indiscretions with both males and females, and on Martin Luther King, whose hotel room the director had bugged. Hoover reveled in the sexual escapades of individuals he had taped, playing them back before selected company. A favorite activity of Hoover’s was the viewing of pornography.

  Despite his interest in erotica, Hoover took a very strong stance against sexual deviancy, which included, in the director’s public estimation, homosexuality. An example of the hypocritical persecution of what he deemed perverse was Hoover’s dismantling of the career of President-elect Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. In late 1952, Hoover reached into his “Sex Deviate” files and pulled out the dirt on Vandenberg. It was reported to Eisenhower that in 1942, there were incidents of a lurid nature between Vandenberg and two enlisted men at Camp Lee, Virginia. Soon after the information was divulged, Vandenberg resigned from his appointment citing “health reasons.”36

  Shortly after Vandenberg’s resignation, Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, which outlined the danger “sexual perversion” as a character trait of a government employee posed to national security.

  Years later, letters of Vandenberg’s from Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower detailed Ike’s remorse.

  “I feel very distressed about your health,” Eisenhower wrote. “I feel in some respects guilty.”37

  What made Hoover’s push against “smut” and what Hoover considered sexual abnormalities more odd was a sexual repression that seemed to dominate his own personal life. His most intimate companion, besides his mother, with whom he lived until her death when he was forty-three-years-old, was his right-hand man at the bureau, Clyde Tolson. Hoover and Tolson maintained a relationship not unlike that of a gay couple, which led to much speculation. They were driven to and from work together, ate almost all meals together, and vacationed together.

  Before John Kennedy had taken office, there were talks that the new administration would eventually replace Hoover. One of the names being floated as a successor was William Boswell, director of State Department security. Hoover would deal with the problem the way he had so many others—with compiled knowledge of his target’s sexual recklessness. Hoover had been keeping a file on John Kennedy’s carnal exploits since 1941, when John was an ensign in the Navy and involved with married Danish journalist Inga Arvad. Arvad had ties to Adolf Hitler, with whom she had spent time with during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Hitler had deemed Arvad “a perfect Nordic beauty.”38 It has been speculated that Joe Kennedy had implored the FBI to put Arvad under surveillance after learning of her dalliance with his son. Following Joe Sr.’s failed ambassadorship in which he was labeled a Nazi appeaser, an exposé of sexual relations between John and someone who could be suspected a German spy would destroy his son’s budding political career. Even though it is true that Joe Sr. opposed the relationship, the FBI certainly would have taken an active interest in Arvad regardless.

  The Arvad affair, though, was insignificant in comparison to the president’s infidelities with Judith Campbell, whom was linked sexually to both Frank Sinatra and Chicago Mafia head Sam “Mooney” Giancana. In February 1960, Kennedy had met Campbell at a Sinatra show at the Sands hotel in Las Vegas. According to Campbell, after their first meeting, she became Kennedy’s constant companion.

  “He asked me about my day,” said Exner, “whom I saw, what I did, and I’d ask him about the campaign. He seemed very anxious to get together again. I was elated, almost giddy. The world looked wonderful.”39

  Shortly after the New Hampshire primary in March 1960, Campbell, with the help of Sinatra, was introduced to Mooney. The love triangle that ensued was one more connection between the Kennedys and La Cosa Nostra. On December 13, 1961, Hoover alerted the attorney general that the FBI was aware that Giancana had given assistance to the Kennedys in the 1960 presidential campaign. Hoover also revealed critical information that the Kennedys had not made good on their terms, and that the Mafia was planning revenge.

  “You got the right idea, Moe, so … fuck everybody,” Johnny Rosselli had told Giancana, “We’ll use them every fucking way we can. They only know one way. Now let them see the other side of you.”40

  Five days later, on December 18, 1961, Joe Kennedy suffered a stroke, which not only left him but also the line of communication between the Kennedys and the Mafia, permanently disabled.

  On March 22, 1962, at a planned lunch with the president and his aide Kenny O’Donnell, Hoover laid out his hand.

  The director brought his ace to the luncheon: knowledge that the married president was sharing a lover with a Mob boss. If played, this information could have instantly destroyed the career and credibility of the president.

  Shortly after the meeting, Kennedy canceled his long-planned upcoming weekend stay at Sinatra’s Palm Springs mansion—something that Sinatra had taken great pains to prepare for. Kennedy instead opted for the politically safer palatial grounds of older Republican crooner Bing Crosby’s estate. He also broke off his two-year relationship with Campbell.

  Hoover did not fail to pull out the goods whenever he thought that the Kennedys needed a reminder.

  “Every month or so,” Robert Kennedy said, Hoover, “would send somebody around to give information on somebody I know or members of my family or allegations in connection with myself. So that it would be clear—whether it was right or wrong—that he was on top of all these things.”41

  Hoover’s job was safe, but the Kennedy administration had rendered his power impotent. Hoover would no longer be able to skip the attorney general and go directly to the president on FBI matters. Bobby did that now. Bobby, in an attempt to assuage the director’s ego, would arrange for John to occasionally call on Hoover.

  Hoover, who had made himself a fixture over the years, was now an ornament, which simply decorated the halls of the Justice Department. Bobby now controlled the power and purpose of the department.

  “I started in the department in 1950 as a young man, worked hard, studied, applied myself,” Bobby said with a smile. “And then my brother was elected president of the United States.”42

  That was the necessary element, the source of Bobby’s power: his brother.

  “There’s no question that I could do it because of my relationship. They wouldn’t have paid attention to me otherwise,” Bobby said, “gone over my head to the president … because a lot of them in the hierarchy were opposed to it … hated the idea.”43

  Hoover, by using his extensive file on John Kennedy, had bought himself more time in the bureau, but with the mandatory US government retirement age of seventy nearing, time was running short. Hoover was sixty-six when John F. Kennedy took office and would be gone by the president’s second term. It was Hoover’s wish to have the retirement mandate waived, but knew this was not to be granted by the Kennedy brothers. At one point, in the outset of his term as attorney general, Bobby attempted to mollify his aides in the face of Hoover’s obstinate behavior by telling them that Hoover would be retired by 1965.44

  The choice for the director became simple: It was either them or him. Hoover, instead of reporting information, would begin to discredit or ignore vital intelligence from reliable sources concerning the president’s safety at the hands of the Mafia. The information detailed the hows, whens, and whys of the Mafia’s plan to dispose of John F. Kennedy. From this intelligence, Hoover regained confidence. By March 1963, the director, who had been disrobed of power throughout the span of the Kennedy administration, slowly learning the plans of the Mafia, in concert with his neighbor and confidant Lyndon Johnson, became bold and obstinate concerning his future in t
he bureau.

  “There had never been any political interference, or misuse of the bureau by any administration since I came here in 1924… . There is none now,” Hoover said to the press. “I plan to stay and get the job done.”

  Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Hoover would have a strong hand in directing the most important event of his career: covering up the death of a president.

  As Lyndon Johnson would later say of the director, “I’d rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”45

  NOTES

  1. Martin, Seeds of Destruction, pg. 305.

  2. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 206.

  3. Ibid, pg. 207.

  4. Gioldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 28.

  5. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 208.

  6. Niagara Gazette, November 11, 2007.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Gioldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 31.

  9. Ibid, pg. 47.

  10. Giancana, Mafia, Foreword.

  11. Gioldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 45.

  12. Russo, The Outfit, pg. 410.

  13. Gioldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 64.

  14. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pg. 93.

  15. Heymann, RFK, pg. 215.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 107.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pg. 294.

  20. North, Mark, Act of Treason, pgs. 297-298.

  21. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 39.

  22. Gentry, Curt, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 475.

  23. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 239-240d.

  24. North, Act of Treason, pg. 65.

  25. Heymann, RFK, pgs. 196-197.

  26. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 337.

  27. Ibid, pg. 47.

  28. Gentry, Curt, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 177.

  29. Hersh, pg. 69.

  30. Ibid, pg. 219.

  31. Ibid, pg. 239.

  32. Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 476.

  33. Ibid, pg. 223.

  34. Ibid, pg. 232.

  35. Ibid.

  36. The New York Times Sunday Review, November 25, 2011.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Gentry, Curt, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 468.

  39. Kelley; People; February 29, 1988; ‘The Dark Side of Camelot’; Vol 29. No. 8.

  40. North, Mark, Act of Treason, pg. 116.

  41. Gentry, Curt, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 479.

  42. Gioldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 26.

  43. Ibid, pg. 49.

  44. North, Mark, Act of Treason, pg. 70.

  45. Ibid, 485.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A THOUSAND PIECES

  On November 29, 1963, one week after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, family friend Bill Walton was dispatched to Moscow. With him was a secret message from Bobby and Jackie Kennedy to be delivered to their back channel connection, Georgi Bolshakov.1 Bolshakov, a Russian intelligence officer and member of the KGB, had held a splintery relationship with Bobby during the Kennedy administration. The two met more than a dozen times on various diplomatic issues between the United States and the Soviet Union, and whereas motives and agendas were held with suspicion, a delicate trust and friendship was developed. Once, at Hickory Hill, Bolshakov challenged Bobby to an impromptu arm-wrestling contest.2

  Walton intimated to Bolshakov that the Kennedys believed the murder of John was part of a wider, homegrown, conspiracy. “Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone,” Walton said, relaying the message. “Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime.”3

  Walton went on to discuss Bobby’s future in politics and how, if, and when the younger Kennedy could get into the White House, the détente with the Soviet Union would continue.

  Bolshakov immediately delivered his report to the Soviet military intelligence agency, and it presumably made its way to Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.

  To initiate peace talks between the two Cold War governments, John Kennedy and Khrushchev had to go through similar back channels because each had grown increasingly skeptical of his own government’s motives and actions.

  “They [government officials],” Bobby professed to Bolshakov, might “go to any length.”4

  The difference between the Kennedy administration and the CIA was stark. An incident that involved Bolshakov, the Kennedys, and a member of the agency is revealing.

  “One time, Bob wanted to invite Georgi to a party of government officials on board the presidential yacht, the Sequoia,” recalled James Symington, Bobby’s administrative assistant. “But McCone [John McCone, the CIA director] from the CIA said, ‘If he gets on the boat, I get off.’”5

  The CIA attempted to shape John Kennedy’s Cold War strategies. When that tactic had failed, the agency formed its own strategy, independent of the president’s wishes. With the approval of NSC 10/2 in 1948 by President Harry Truman’s National Security Council, permission was given to the agency to carry out, “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas, and refugee liberation groups.”6

  Secretary of State George Marshall warned President Truman before the act was passed that the command that it endowed the CIA would be “almost limitless.”7 The act expanded the scope of operations that the CIA could carry out and granted the agency autonomy. Operations could now be, “so planned and executed that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons, and that if uncovered, the US government can plausibly deny any responsibility for them.”8

  The CIA was a conspiracy unto itself.

  The agency now had permission to enact operations without the consent of any other government branch, carry them out secretly, and deny their existence if discovered.

  The plot for CIA-trained exiles to invade Cuba was a program made possible by NSC 10/2. Later named the Bay of Pigs invasion initial planning for the operation happened throughout 1959. On November 29, 1959, a reluctant Eisenhower gave the program a green light, which he reaffirmed on January 3, 1960—just seventeen days before John Kennedy’s inauguration.

  Shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower had choice words for the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles. “The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty,” he said to Dulles. “I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this. Nothing has changed since Pearl Harbor. I leave a ‘legacy of ashes’ to my successor.”9

  In his farewell speech, the former five-star general would leave his warning to the American people.

  “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

  As Eisenhower knew, misplaced power had risen and would make a play with the Bay of Pigs invasion.

  The mission was already not without its problems. The Cuban exiles, trained in Guatemala, were discontented because they were not informed of the current political news from Cuba or the kind of future they were being trained to fight for in their homeland. Additionally, the quota was not being filled for the number of exiles intended to be trained.10

  President Kennedy, as requested after he took office, was filled in on the basic concepts of the invasion along with the new Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The Bay of Pigs invasion was an inherited operation, which would give John Kennedy quick lessons in foreign and domestic policies. The new president knew the scope of the situation. He also understood that the repressive Castro regime in Cuba was a consequence of the United States support of the Batista
regime.

  “I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation, and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime,” Kennedy told French journalist Jean Daniel. “I believe that we created, built, and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America. The great aim of the Alliance for Progress is to reverse this unfortunate policy. This is one of the most, if not the most, important problems in America foreign policy. I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans.”11

  But speaking of the problems Cuba’s nuclear aspirations created in the international community, Kennedy was not sure that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro even “realizes this, or even if he cares about it.”12

  In the early hours of April 17, 1961, a force of 1,400 exiles landed on Playa Giron, a beach in southern Cuba. Fidel Castro’s forces easily overtook the rebel invasion, killing two hundred and capturing 1,197 when the invading force, stifled by Cuban air forces, were denied sufficient air support and resupplies of ammunition.

  “We are out of ammo and fighting on the beach,” the rebel brigade commander called out. “Please send help. We cannot hold.”13

  The invasion was over in two days. Initially considered a failure of the Kennedy administration due to reluctance to send air support, it was later revealed that Soviet forces knew about the attack in advance. The CIA was privy to this information, but neglected to inform President Kennedy.

  “There was some indication that the Soviets somewhere around the ninth [of April] had gotten the date of the seventeenth,” Jacob Esterline, one of the Bay of Pigs invasion key CIA organizers testified later to the Taylor Commission.14