The Man Who Killed Kennedy Read online

  The FBI had a spy, an informant denoted as “NY 3653-S,” in the KGB residency in New York City. This informant told the FBI in September of 1965 of an important telegram from the head of the KGB, Vladimir Semichastny, to the KGB NYC residency. Here is how Hoover described it:

  On September 16, 1965, this same source reported that the KGB Residency in New York City received instructions approximately September 16, 1965, from KGB headquarters in Moscow to develop all possible information concerning President Lyndon B. Johnson’s character, background, personal friends, family, and from which quarters he derives his support in his position as president of the United States. Our source added that in the instructions from Moscow, it was indicated that ‘now’ the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.

  The first JFK assassination researchers were the Russians and the Cubans. They had a sharp interest in finding out who killed him because they were in grave danger of being framed for the heinous crime both by Lyndon Johnson and US intelligence. In fact, as a diversionary tactic, LBJ told many opinion makers behind the scenes that Fidel Castro had murdered John Kennedy.

  Two days before the assassination, Castro was entertaining Jean Daniel, a journalist sent by Kennedy to open a channel of dialogue between the Cuban dictator and himself.

  “Suddenly, a president arrives on the scene who tries to support the interests of another class (which has no access to any of the levers of power) to give the various Latin American countries the impression that the United States no longer stands behind the dictators, and so there is no more need to start Castro-type revolutions,” Castro said to Daniel. “What happens then? The trusts see that their interests are being a little compromised (just barely, but still compromised); the Pentagon thinks the strategic bases are in danger; the powerful oligarchies in all the Latin American countries alert their American friends; they sabotage the new policy; and in short, Kennedy has everyone against him.”33

  Two days later, Kennedy was assassinated. “This is bad news,”34 Castro repeated three times when he got the news. “Everything is changed,”35 Castro announced upon confirmation of the president’s death.

  On Saturday, the day after the murder of JFK, Castro gave a speech entitled “Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F. Kennedy” in which he did a fine job of deconstructing the assassination in real time. Castro knew that Cuba was in grave danger of being framed for the crime. And, in fact, that was exactly the line that Lyndon Johnson was pushing behind the scenes with key players whom he needed to manipulate. Castro also correctly surmised that internal American foreign policy divisions played a key role in the JFK assassination.

  On December 22, 1963, a month to the day after President Kennedy was assassinated, former President Harry Truman, who as president had signed over enormous power to the CIA, would write an op-ed piece for the Washington Post revealing his misgivings concerning the agency. The column outlined Truman’s original intent for the CIA as a source for reliable, unfiltered information for the president, and then admonished the agency for working with contrary intent.

  “We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society,” Truman wrote. “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position, and I feel that we need to correct it.”36

  Presidential advisor Clark Clifford, when testifying before the Church Commission about the abuses of the CIA in 1975, talked about how expansive the agency had gotten during the Kennedy administration, due in part to the growing conflicts abroad.

  “I would hope that possibly, we might be in the posture as time goes on of being able to take the position that the world is in such shape that we are cutting back in intelligence expenditures,” Clifford said. “Hopefully détente with the Soviet Union, and possibly Red China, might progress to the point that possibly we could take a public position in that regard.”37

  The CIA did not want peace any more than they wanted a rogue president who would attempt to slowly dismantle the agency. At one point, John said he should have put Bobby at the helm of the CIA instead of the Justice Department. The assignment would have proved effective in reining in the agency, might have prevented the corrupted alliance of the CIA and the Mafia, and could have stopped Vice President Lyndon Johnson from using the services of both on November 22, 1963.

  In addition to the KGB who concluded this by 1965, there is yet another high-level political player who came to the eventual conclusion that LBJ was behind the JFK assassination: Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who had opposed Johnson in the 1964 presidential race. In an interview conducted in 2012 at the Dallas JFK Lancer conference, Jeffrey Hoff told of the time that he met Senator Barry Goldwater at a Republican political picnic in Willcox in Cochise County, Arizona, in October, 1973. Hoff had been invited to the GOP picnic by a friend, Louise Parker, who was a “real estate lady,” and from a prominent Arizona “pioneer” family. She asked Hoff if he wanted to meet Barry Goldwater, and he said yes.

  Upon meeting Goldwater, Hoff, who had a keen interest in the JFK assassination, brought up the topic. Goldwater told him that he was convinced that Lyndon Johnson was behind it, and that the Warren Commission was a total cover up. When asked how confident Goldwater was when he was making these statements, Hoff replied Goldwater was “very comfortable” with his belief that LBJ was behind the JFK assassination.

  NOTES

  1. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 30.

  2. Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life, pgs. 179–180.

  3. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 32.

  4. Thomas, 208.

  5. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 31.

  6. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pg. 33.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Janney, Mary’s Mosaic, pg. 232.

  10. Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associated Documents, Vol I, pg. 22.

  11. Daniel, The New Republic, December, 1963, pgs. 15–30.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associated Documents, Vol I, pg. 32.

  14. Washington Post, April 29, 2000.

  15. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 48.

  16. Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associated Documents, Vol I, pg. 144.

  17. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 50.

  18. Ibid, pg. 49.

  19. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pg. 16.

  20. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 51.

  21. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pg. 12.

  22. www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html.

  23. www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Cuban Missile Crisis: 35 Years Ago JFK on Tape, pg, 29.

  26. Shesol, Mutual Contempt, pgs. 96-97.

  27. www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html.

  28. Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1989.

  29. Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July 26, 1963.

  30. Remarks Prepared for Delivery at the Trade Mart in Dallas, November 22, 1963.

  31. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 33.

  32. Los Angeles Times, “Document Tells Soviet Theory on JFK Death.” Sept. 18, 1996.

  33. Daniel, The New Republic, December, 1963, pgs. 15–30.

  34. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 252.

  35. Ibid, pg. 253.

  36. Washington Post, December 22, 1963.

  37. Testimony of Clark Clifford, April 16, 1975.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MOB BOYS

  In advance of the 1960 West Virginia primary, the easily recognizable voice of Frank Sinatra echoed in barrooms throughout the state. The lyrics sounded familiar as well, albeit tweaked to promote his candidate for president:
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  K-E-DOUBLE-N-E-D-Y

  Jack’s the nation’s favorite guy

  Everyone wants to back Jack

  Jack is on the right track

  ‘Cause he’s got high hopes

  He’s got high hopes

  1960’s the year for his high hopes

  Come on and vote for Kennedy

  Vote for Kennedy

  Keep America strong

  The original version of the song “High Hopes” was written by lyricist Sammy Cahn for the 1959 Frank Sinatra movie vehicle A Hole in the Head. The revamped version, written as the Kennedy campaign song, was put on repeat and drummed into the heads of the West Virginia voting public.

  “Jesus, we even had to muscle the taverns to convince ‘em to play Frank’s song High Hopes on the jukeboxes,” said Mooney Giancana. “Those hillbillies hate the idea of an East Coast Irish Catholic President.”

  The reworded tune was one of the Sinatra’s contributions to the Kennedy campaign, but his most important job was to sway Giancana’s opinion on the sincerity of Joe Sr.

  During the campaign, Frank’s words were held as bond. Even with Bobby, who had ruthlessly prosecuted mobsters on the McClellan Committee, the assurances of Sinatra and Joe Sr. were taken seriously by Giancana and the Chicago Mob.

  “There was also trepidation about backing JFK because of Bobby,” said George Brady, the godson of Murray “The Camel” Humphreys, a Giancana financial advisor who was thought by some to have pulled the strings of the Chicago mobster. “But on the positive side, Frank [Sinatra] talked him up.”1

  People don’t see the real influence in American politics of outside groups like the Mob. In the late 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover insisted that domestic communism was the largest single threat to America. To him, organized crime simply did not exist.

  Richard Nixon told me that the extent of the Mob’s involvement in the 1960 election—on both sides—has never really been fully reported. Joe Sr. had a longtime association with New York’s urbane gangster Frank Costello, and their bootlegging business proved problematic. Costello and the New York boys had long ties to Nixon and funneled money to his 1946 congressional race and his 1950 Senate election, as syndicated columnist Drew Pearson reported on Oct 31, 1968 in his “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column. Joe Kennedy was forced to go to the Chicago Mob through Johnny Rosselli, the Chicago hood. Kennedy also utilized Frank Sinatra to reach out to Chicago mobsters Giancana, Humphreys, Joe Accardo, Jack Avery, and Jake “Greasy-Thumb” Gruzik. In turn, they enlisted New Orleans Mob’s kingpin Carlos Marcello and Florida’s Santo Trafficante. For Joe, who would do anything to secure important votes for his son, Giancana was certainly the man to see.

  “Giancana rules the First Ward like a Tartan warlord,” wrote reporter Sandy Smith. “He can brush an alderman off the city council with a gesture of his hand—as he did in 1962.”2

  “I think you can help me in West Virginia and Illinois with our friends,” Joe Kennedy told Sinatra. “You understand, Frank, I can’t go. They’re my friends, too, but I can’t approach them. But you can.”3

  There is also evidence that the elder Kennedy sought out and convened with Giancana in person. Sinatra was sent ahead, playing the part of cheerleader, extolling the virtues of Kennedy before Joe Sr. went to Mooney to complete the deal.

  Joe Kennedy, one of the most successful bootleggers of his era, was known as a rat—his word was not to be trusted. Frank Sinatra was the comeback kid. The singer had begun the 1950s as a falling star, but finished the decade as the top recording artist in the world with an Academy Award. The comeback would be due in no small part to Giancana’s associate Johnny Rosselli. When Sinatra bottomed out, Rosselli—so close to Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn that they wore matching rings4—petitioned to deliver Sinatra the role of tough-talking Private Angelo Maggio in Cohn’s Pearl Harbor military drama From Here to Eternity. The negotiation was later fictionalized with characters Jack Woltz (Cohn), Tom Hagen (Rosselli), and Johnny Fontane (Sinatra) in The Godfather.

  “The Maggio role, Sinatra wasn’t going to get it,” said Rosselli associate Joe Seide. “He got it through New York friends, and John Rosselli was the go-between. Johnny was the one who talked to Harry—he was the one who laid it out. That was serious business. It was in the form of look, you do this for me and maybe we won’t do this to you. There was none of that stuff about a horse’s head, but a lot of ‘juice’ was directed.”5

  Rosselli was similar to Sinatra in his ties to both legitimate and criminal enterprise. Rosselli, though, with wide knowledge of Joe Sr.’s ruthlessness, was not the man to make a Kennedy pitch to Giancana.

  In contrast, Sinatra, who was close to Giancana, was the ideal pitchman to promote the Kennedy image. He would sell the promises of the father to the Mafia much in the way that Joe Sr. would market John to the American public, “like soap flakes.” Sinatra figured himself an inside man for the Kennedy family. But it wouldn’t be long before the singer, having done the old man’s bidding, would be pushed out of Camelot.

  “He’s got big ideas, Frank does, about being ambassador or something,” Rosselli would later tell Giancana. “You know Pierre Salinger and them guys, they don’t want him. They treat him like a whore. You fuck them, you pay them, and then they’re through.”6

  Kennedy collected sizable contributions from all but Giancana’s man Humphreys, a Republican who said Joe Kennedy was “full of shit” and pointed out how Bobby Kennedy had harassed the mob as counsel to the Senate’s McClellan hearings on labor racketeering. Instead, Murray “The Camel” sent $100,000 to Nixon while the Midwestern and Southwestern families (with some kicked in from the Bonannos in New York) gave more than a million to Kennedy and pledged their army of enforcers to deliver votes for the ticket.

  Mob activity for Kennedy on Election Day would have made the “Duke of Duval” George Parr proud. It included nonexistent voters voting, registered voters being denied the right to vote, and manipulation of the count. Poll watchers for Nixon provided Polaroid photographs of money changing hands for votes outside of polling places. Voters were intimidated and, in many cases, threatened. Bones were broken.

  There is no doubt that Sam Giancana and the Chicago outfit stole Chicago for JFK. Giancana later said, “if it weren’t for me, Kennedy wouldn’t even be in the White House.”

  But the Mob played heavily on both sides.

  In his ground-breaking book Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh wrote that Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters gave Nixon $1 million while the Eastern Mob chieftains like Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky rounded up another million for the Nixon cause.

  Richard Nixon had his own arms-length relationship with the Mob. Hollywood gangster Mickey Cohen, who was Meyer Lansky’s top lieutenant on the West Coast, had funneled money to Nixon’s 1946 congressional campaign through Myford Irvine, whose ranch was a big agribusiness in Orange County. He did it again in Nixon’s successful bid for the Senate in 1950.

  Nixon campaign manager and Mob lawyer Murray Chotiner, whose law firm had defended a number of Cohen’s underlings for illegal bookmaking, asked Cohen to raise funds for Nixon’s 1950 effort.

  Cohen convened a meeting at the Knickerbocker Hotel on North Ivar Avenue in Hollywood. He invited several hundred associates from the gambling business; (some flew in from Las Vegas). Cohen later said, “there wasn’t a legitimate person in the room.” Attending were representatives of Meyer Lansky, Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna, and representatives of the Cleveland Mob including John Scalish and Jewish mobster Bill Presser. Presser’s son Jackie would parlay his relationship with Ronald Reagan into the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

  Cohen later wrote that the goal for the evening was $75,000 for Nixon’s coffers from his crime and gambling associates, and that he ordered the doors locked when the group came up $20,000 short, refusing to let anyone leave until the financial goal was met.

  Nixon had met with Cohen as early as 1946 at Goodfellow’s Grotto, a f
ish restaurant in Orange County where the booths were private, and politics could be talked frankly.

  Cohen made it clear that the orders to help Nixon in 1950 came from “back East,” meaning New York boss Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky, both leaders of the national syndicate.

  Ironically, Joe Kennedy Sr., a great friend of Senator Joe McCarthy’s and generally distrustful of liberals (even though he had funneled money to presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson through Chicago mobster Jake Arvey), sent $25,000 in cash to Nixon in the same campaign that the Lansky associates funded.

  Later, when Cohen was in prison in 1962, Democratic lawyers took a sworn statement from him about his longtime support for Nixon and the thousands of dollars he had raised from his gangland associates. Democrats hoped to leak the affidavit from Cohen to damage Nixon just before the 1962 election for governor of California, in which the former vice president was running against incumbent Democrat Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. Although Cohen’s extensive revelations were never leaked, Nixon lost that election when the Cuban missile crisis overshadowed the closing weeks of the campaign—voters rallied behind President Kennedy and swamped Nixon at the polls by more than five percent.

  It’s unclear if Attorney General Robert Kennedy would have continued his crusade against organized crime if his overbearing father, who had made the original deals with the mob, had not been felled by the debilitating stroke. Clearly, the Chicago boys felt they had bought protection through the hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions in today’s dollars) that they had passed to the Kennedy-Johnson campaign and the foot soldiers they had supplied in West Virginia and Wisconsin in the 1960 primaries and in Chicago during the 1960 general election.

  Joe Sr. and Giancana met first at Giancana’s headquarters in Forest Park, a suburb of Chicago, prior to the primaries and came up with the initial blueprint for capturing the presidency.

  “I later heard that Joe Kennedy was asking Mooney and [ward committeeman Pat] Marcy what help they could bring to the election of his son,” said Rob McDonnell, an attorney who was on hand for the legendary meeting. “He was obsessed with the election of John Kennedy, absolutely obsessed with it. And I don’t know what deals were cut. I don’t know what promises were made.”7