David
E. Scheim has
published two books claiming that the Mafia were responsible for the
assassination of John
F. Kennedy.
He believes that it was organized by Carlos
Marcello,
Santos
Trafficante and
Jimmy
Hoffa.
This theory is based on the idea that the Mafia were angry with both
John
F. Kennedy
and Robert
Kennedy
for their attempts to destroy organized crime. Scheim's theory was
supported by Trafficante's lawyer, Frank
Ragano, who published the book Mob
Lawyer,
in 1994. The theory
is also supported by the investigative journalist, Jack
Anderson.
G.
Robert Blakey,
chief counsel and staff director to the House
Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, published
The Plot to Kill the President
in 1981. In the book Blakey argues that Lee
Harvey Oswald was
involved but believes that there was at least one gunman firing from
the Grassy Knoll. Blakey came to the
conclusion that the Mafia boss, Carlos
Marcello,
organized the assassination.
Anthony
Summers is the
author of The Kennedy Conspiracy.
He believes that Kennedy was killed by a group of anti-Castro activists,
funded by Mafia mobsters that had been ousted from Cuba.
Summers believes that some members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy.
Summers speculated that the following people were involved in this
conspiracy: Johnny Roselli, Carlos
Marcello,
Santos
Trafficante,
Sam Giancana, David
Ferrie, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Guy
Bannister and E.Howard Hunt.
In his book, JFK:
The Second Plot (1992), Matthew
Smith points out that Thomas H. Killam, a man who worked for Jack
Ruby,
claimed that there was a link between his former employer, Lee
Harvey Oswald
and the Mafia. He told his
brother, "I am a dead man, but I have run as far as I am running."
Killam was found dead in an alley with his throat cut in March, 1964.
Stephen
Rivele
argued in the 1988
television documentary, The Men Who Killed
Kennedy that the Kennedy's
assassination had been organized by Antoine
Guerini, the Corsican crime boss in Marseilles. He also claimed
that Lucien Sarti had been one of the gunmen.
In
October, 1991, Chauncey
Holt
confessed to John Craig, Phillip Rogers and Gary
Shaw about
his role in the assassination of John
F. Kennedy.
He claimed Peter Licavoli, a leading
figure in the Mafia in Detroit, had organized
the conspiracy and named Charlie Nicoletti,
Charles
Harrelson and Charles
Rogers
as the gunmen.
In 1992 the nephew of Sam
Giancana published Double Cross: The
Story of the Man Who Controlled
America.
The book attempted to establish that Giancana had rigged the 1960
Presidential election vote in Cook County on John Kennedy's behalf,
which effectively gave Kennedy the election. It is argued that Kennedy
reneged on the deal and therefore Giancana had him killed.
The
next crime figure to confess to the crime was James
Files. He claimed that two Mafia
leaders, Sam
Giancana and Johnny
Roselli organized
the assassination. Charlie
Nicoletti was identified as the other gunman.
The story was eventually appeared in
a video The Murder of JFK: Confession of
an Assassin (1996).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(H1)
Richard
Bissell,
Reflections of a Cold Warrior (1996)
(The Mafia-connection aspect) did not originate with me - and I had
no desire to become personally involved in its implementation, mainly
because I was not competent to handle relations with the Mafia. It
is true, however, that, when the idea was presented to me, I supported
it, and as Deputy Director for Plans I was responsible for the necessary
decisions.... Sheffield Edwards, the director of the Agency's Office
of Security - and his deputy became the case officers for the Agency's
relations with the Mafia. Edwards was frank with me about his efforts,
and I authorized him to continue... I do not recall any specific contact
with the Mafia, but Doris Mirage, my secretary at the time, does...
I hoped the Mafia would
achieve success. My philosophy during my last two or three years in
the Agency was very definitely that the end justified the means, and
I was not going to be held back. Shortly after I left the CIA, however,
I came to believe that it had been a mistake to involve the Mafia
in an assassination attempt. This is partly a moral judgment, but
I must admit it is also partly a pragmatic judgment.
What did
the Mafia do for the CIA?
(H2)
Edward Reid interviewed Edward Becker for his book, The Grim Reapers
(1969)
It was then that Carlos Marcello's voice lost its softness, and his
words were bitten off and spit out when mention was made of U.S. Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, who was still on the trail of Marcello. "Livarsi
na petra di la scarpa!" Carlos shrilled the cry of revenge: "Take
the stone out of my shoe!" "Don't worry about that little
Bobby, son of a bitch," he shouted. "He's going to be taken
care of!" Ever since Robert Kennedy had arranged for his deportation
to Guatemala, Carlos had wanted revenge. But as the subsequent conversation,
which was reported to two top Government investigators by one of the
participants and later to this author, showed, he knew that to rid
himself of Robert Kennedy he would first have to remove the President.
Any killer of the Attorney General would be hunted down by his brother;
the death of the President would seed the fate of his Attorney General.
No one at the meeting had
any doubt about Marcello's intentions when he abruptly arose from
the table. Marcello did not joke about such things. In any case, the
matter had gone beyond mere "business"; it had become an
affair of honor, a Sicilian vendetta. Moreover, the conversation at
Churchill Farms also made clear that Marcello had begun to move. He
had, for example, already thought of using "nut" to do the
job. Roughly one year later President Kennedy was shot Dallas - two
months after Attorney General Robert Kennedy had announced to the
McClellan committee that he was going to expand his war on organized
crime. And it is perhaps significant that privately Robert Kennedy
had singled out James Hoffa, Sam Giancana, and Carlos Marcello as
being among his chief targets.
Why did
Carlos Marcello target John Kennedy rather than Robert Kennedy?
(H3)
Edward Becker, interviewed by House
Select Committee on Assassinations (8th November, 1978)
My account of the meeting and discussion with Marcello in 1962 is
truthful. It was then and it is now. I was there. The FBI (their agents
in Los Angeles) have tried to discredit me. They've done everything
except investigate the information I gave Reid. They apparently have
always said it was not the truth, but they've never investigated it
to arrive at that judgment?
How,
according to Edward Becker, did the FBI react to his information about
Carlos Marcello?
(H4)
G.
Robert Blakey,
House Select Committee on Assassinations
(September, 1978)
Becker stated that Marcello
had made his remarks about the Kennedy brothers after Becker said
something to the effect that "Bobby Kennedy is really giving
you a rough time." He could not recall the exact words Marcello
used in threatening President Kennedy, but believed the account in
Reid's book "is basically correct."Marcello was very angry
and had "clearly stated that he was going to arrange to have
President Kennedy murdered in some way." Marcello's statement
had been made in a serious tone and sounded as if he had discussed
it previously to some extent. Becker commented that Marcello had made
some kind of reference to President Kennedy's being a dog and Attorney
General Robert Kennedy the dog's tail, and had said "the dog
will keep biting you you only cut off its tail," but that if
the dog's head were cut off, the dog would die.
Becker stated that Marcello
also made some kind of reference to the way in which he allegedly
wanted to arrange the President's murder. Marcello "clearly indicated"
that his own lieutenants must not be identified as the assassins,
and that there would thus necessity to have them use or manipulate
someone else to carry out the actual crime.
Becker told the committee
that while he believed Marcello had been serious when he spoke of
wanting to have the President assassinated, he did not believe the
Mafia leader was capable of carrying it out or had the opportunity
to do so. He emphasized that while he was disturbed by Marcello's
remarks at the time, he had grown accustomed to hearing criminal figures
make threats against adversaries.
What did
Carlos Marcello mean by the phrase: "the dog will keep biting
you you only cut off its tail"?
(H5)
Robert
G. Blakey, House
Select Committee on Assassinations (September, 1978)
The evidence shows that
the FBI's failure to investigate the allegation that Marcello had
discussed assassinating President Kennedy constituted a violation
of the Director's promise to investigate all circumstances surrounding
the President's murder even after the official Warren Commission investigation
had ended in 1964. In his appearance before the Commission on May
6, 1964, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had personally affirmed that
promise stating:
I can assure you so far as the FBI is concerned the case will be continued
in an open classification for all time. That is, any information coming
to us or any report coming to us from any source will be thoroughly
investigated, so that we will be able to either prove or disprove
the allegation.
The FBI's failure to take
seriously the alleged Marcello threat was all the more disturbing
given the time at which the Bureau learned of and discarded the allegation
- less than 2 months after the leadership of the Bureau had been faulted
by President Johnson himself not pursuing another allegation by an
underworld informant that Mafia figures and Cuban agents might secretly
have been involved in President Kennedy's assassination.
Who did
G. Robert Blakey blame for the failure to investigate the allegation
that Carlos Marcello was planning the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
(H6)
An unnamed criminal was quoted by Michael Dorman in his book, Payoff:
The Role of Organized Crime in American Politics (1972).
You know, the Federal government
has been harassing Carlos (Marcello) for the last ten years, and it's
all because of politics.... In 1960, when Bobby Kennedy was managing
his brother's presidential campaign, he sent a guy down here to see
Carlos. This was before the Democratic National Convention. He wanted
Carlos to use his influence to swing the Louisiana delegation for
Kennedy at the convention. Carlos said that he was sorry, but that
he'd already promised his support at the convention to Lyndon Johnson.
The Louisiana delegation went for Johnson. Even though Jack Kennedy
got the nomination and picked Johnson for Vice President, Bobby was
pissed off at Carlos and promised he'd get even. When he became attorney
general, the first
thing he did was start a campaign to put Jimmy Hoffa in the pen. The
second thing he did was go after Carlos's ass... All the Feds have
been harassing Carlos ever since... Once these things get started
in Washington, it's hard to stop them no matter who's President.
According
to this account, why did Robert Kennedy persecute Carlos Marcello?
(H7)
In 1989 David
E. Scheim
was asked by Blaine Taylor
who killed President John
F. Kennedy.
The three
people are Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss of New Orleans... The second
figure is Santos Trafficante, who was the Mafia boss at Tampa, Florida.
The third is Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters' boss who was killed... Like
Carlos Marcello, each of the other two had spoken openly of assassination
plots against the Kennedys, and this all occurred in the summer months
of 1962. All three of them were very close friends, and, when we look
at Jack Ruby's telephone records, we find an astonishing peak in the
number of out-of-state calls in the months before the assassination
- it's actually 25-fold
greater than in the month of the previous January. Most
of those calls are to organized crime figures, in particular to top
associates of Marcello,
Trafficante, and Hoffa.
Who
did David E. Scheim believe organized the assassination of John F.
Kennedy?
(H8)
Matthew
Smith, JFK: The Second Plot
(1992)
The Mafia had strong
reasons for wanting Kennedy dead. They had lost their huge gambling
interests in Havana when Castro seized power, and had been standing
on the touchline waiting for action by die Kennedy administration
which would reverse the situation and give them their casinos back.
It never happened. Instead they watched their government embrace a
policy of détente towards Castro's Cuba with growing dismay
and anger. Nor was this the only reason for their disenchantment with
Kennedy. John appointed his brother, Robert, Attorney General, and
Robert had opened up
an all-out war against the Mafia. Never before had such success been
obtained by the forces of law against mobsters who, for years, had
evaded prosecution. It had also a gathering momentum, for law enforcement
agents in many cities in the United States were so impressed by Robert
Kennedy's campaign they began bringing cases against their local mobsters
which past experience of failures had made them reluctant to prosecute.
The local success rate also boomed, and the Mafia were shaken. Their
instincts were to kill Robert Kennedy, but they knew that this would
only cause the President to increase the pressure, leaving the only
way to kill the President. If the President was removed, the Attorney
General would be replaced, since the appointment was one of patronage.
Chicago mobster, Sam Giancana,
was high on Robert Kennedy's hit list, and he was well aware of it.
He claimed to have had connections with the Kennedy's father, Joe,
who made his fortune as a bootlegger in the days of prohibition. His
dealings with Joe Kennedy, he claimed, earned him privileges from
the President rather than the persecution to which he was being subjected.
In a book. Double Cross: The Story of the Man Who Controlled
America, published
in Britain in 1992, Sam Giancana's brother and nephew sought
to establish that Giancana had rigged the Presidential election vote
in Cook County on
John Kennedy's behalf, which effectively gave Kennedy the election.
This was to ensure a 'relationship' between the President and Giancana,
on which the President reneged, and Giancana killed the President
for his double cross.
It is a spicy, imaginative tale for which no substantiation is
provided at any level.
According
to Matthew Smith, what motive did the Mafia have for assassinating
John F. Kennedy?
(H9)
G. Robert Blakey was
interviewed by Frontline
in 1993.
Q: Was there a connection
between Oswald and organized crime?
A: At this point in time,
New Orleans was corrupt, and the principle figure behind that corruption,
gambling etc, was Carlos Marcello. Oswald at this time brushed up
against organized crime in its worst forms. Oswald's uncle, a man
named Charles "Dutz" Murret, was an ex-prize fighter and
promoter who was also a bookie. He was under the control of Carlos
Marcello, who at that time was the head of the Mafia in New Orleans.
These were the people who were in the sphere of Lee Harvey Oswald's
life as a child.
Q: Mobsters talked of their
hatred of Kennedy. Could you talk about that - which mobsters, what
did they say?
A: There is a story told
by a man named Edward Becker, of a conversation with Carlos Marcello,
in which Carlos Marcello talks about getting, he speaks in Sicilian,
"getting the stone out of my shoe," and talking about getting
a nut to kill, not Bobby Kennedy, who was his nemesis, but John Kennedy,
who was the man behind the nemesis. We took that statement very seriously
and investigated Becker and Becker's credibility. Was he associated
with the people he says he was? Was he in New Orleans at the time
and place he says he was? Our judgment was that Becker's story was
true.
More significantly, in
recent days, a man named Frank Ragano, who was a long-time lawyer
for Santo Trafficante, tells the story that Trafficante, shortly before
he underwent a serious operation, confided to him that "Carlos
messed up." He said that "we should have killed Bobby and
not Giovanni." This evidence is of extraordinary significance.
Q: A number of Mafia leaders
have been overheard either threatening or boasting about having a
hand in killing Kennedy. What was the evidence?
A: We took very seriously
the possibility that organized crime had a hand in the President's
death. I personally did not believe it at the time. I thought we could
prove that they didn't. The FBI had an illegal electronic surveillance
on the major figures of organized crime in the major areas in this
country... in New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo and elsewhere. We did
a survey of that illegal electronic surveillance: Eight months before
the assassination and six months after. We were looking for some indication
in these men's conversations that would connect them to the assassination
- to either Lee Harvey Oswald, or to Jack Ruby. We found no evidence
in it to connect them to Oswald or Ruby. On the other hand, what we
did find, shockingly, is repeated conversations by these people that
indicated the depth of their hatred for Kennedy, and actual discussions
saying: "he ought to be killed," "he ought to be whacked."
Q: But you're pointing
the finger towards Carlos Marcello and organized crime rather than
the equally violent anti-Kennedy elements in the anti-Castro Cuban
movement.
A: You don't have to separate
the anti-Castro Cubans and organized crime. There are substantial
overlaps. Santo Trafficante (who some claim had met Ruby) from Tampa
was in Cuba, and many of his associates in illegal businesses are
Cuban and were people who were thrown out of Cuba by Castro. They're
both organized crime and anti-Castro Cubans. On the other hand, not
every anti-Castro Cuban is involved in organized crime. Indeed most
are not. They were legitimate ex-patriots.
What
evidence does G. Robert Blakey put forward to support his theory that
Oswald was connected to the Mafia?
(H10)
G. Robert
Blakey was interviewed by ABC
News in 2003.
ABC News: In your book
you point the finger squarely at Carlos Marcello and his organization.
Why would he want to kill Kennedy?
Blakey: Carlos Marcello
was being subject to the most vigorous investigation he had ever experienced
in his life, designed to put him in jail. He was in fact summarily,
without due process, deported to Guatemala. He took the deportation
personally. He hated the Kennedys. He had the motive, the opportunity
and the means in Lee Harvey Oswald to kill him. I think he did through
Oswald....
ABC News: Since you believe
that Lee Oswald shot the president, and you also believe that Carlos
Marcello was behind the assassination, what connections do you point
to between Oswald and Marcello?
Blakey: I can show you
that Lee Harvey Oswald knew, from his boyhood forward, David Ferrie,
and David Ferrie was an investigator for Carlos Marcello on the day
of the assassination, with him in a court room in New Orleans. I can
show you that Lee Harvey Oswald, when he grew up in New Orleans, lived
with the Dutz Murret family (one of Oswald's uncles). Dutz Murret
is a bookmaker for Carlos Marcello.
Why does
G. Robert Blakey believe Carlos Marcello wanted to have John F. Kennedy
killed?
(H11)
Judith
Campbell Exner,
People
Magazine (10th November, 1999)
Before Monica
Lewinsky, the was Judith Campbell Exner. Nearly 25 years ago, with
the myth of Camelot still nearly intact, Exner stepped forward to
reveal the first account of an affair that would tarnish the image
of President John F. Kennedy. At her death from cancer on Sept. 24
in Duarte Calif., Exner, 65, was still energetically defending her
story.
It was one
she first told in 1975, when Senate investigators began probing reports,
never proved, that Kennedy had enlisted Chicago Mod boss Sam Giancana
in a plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Exner told investigators
that, as a young party girl from Los Angeles, she had been introduced
to Kennedy in Las Vegas in 1960 by mutual friend Frank Sinatra. Within
a matter of weeks, she said, she was in bed with JFK at New York City's
Plaza Hotel, beginning a two and half year affair. "When you
talked to Jack, he talked just to you." Exner told People in
1988.
Reports of the liaison,
leaked to the press in 1975, stirred enormous controversy. Kennedy
loyalists accused Exner of making it all up. Yet evidence showed that
Exner had visited the President on several occasions in the White
House and had spoken to him some 70 times by phone. "I was crucified
because I had had the audacity to have an affair with Jack Kennedy,"
said Exner.
What evidence
did Judith Campbell Exner provide that Sam Giancana was working for
John F. Kennedy?
(H12)
Anthony Summers, The
Kennedy Conspiracy (1980)
Judith Campbell Exner's
account cannot be dismissed. It is specific in dates and details and
supported by travel documents, by her annotated appointment book,
and by official logs recording three of her visits to the White House.
A credible source has said Exner told him the gist of her story soon
after the events in question. Giancana's half-brother Chuck has also
claimed to know of contacts between the mafioso and Kennedy, and of
the go-between role played by Exner.
Meanwhile, a source far
more likely to be believed has stated that Robert Kennedy, supervising
anti-Castro operations for his brother, ordered the CIA to assign
a case officer to meet with Mafia figures. Sam Halpern, a former senior
Agency official on the Cuba desk, said Kennedy himself supplied the
Mafia contacts.
If such allegations -
and especially Judith Exner's claims - are true, then President Kennedy
was playing a horrendously dangerous game. For, throughout the presidency,
his brother was vigorously pursuing his investigation of the Mafia
- not least of Giancana himself. Giancana and other top mobsters evidently
hoped for leniency under a Kennedy administration, as a quid pro quo
for their support during the election that brought Kennedy to power.
But Giancana would be overheard on an FBI wiretap saying, "The
President will get what he wants out of you... but you won't get anything
out of him."
If top Mafia bosses now
felt double-crossed, their law - the law of the mob - might demand
vengeance.
Judith Campbell was involved
with both John F. Kennedy.
Why did
Sam Giancana feel double-crossed by John F. Kennedy?
(H13)
Godfrey Hodgson, Judith
Campbell Exner,
The
Guardian (27th September, 1999)
Judith Campbell Exner,
who has died of cancer, aged 65, in a Los Angeles hospital, became
notorious in the middle 1970s when she claimed that she had had an
affair with President John F Kennedy from 1960 until 1962. She said
she and Kennedy made love in New York hotels, at Kennedy's home and
even in the White House. After her affair with the president ended,
she had a brief relationship with Sam Giancana, the capo of the Chicago
Mafia.
In her 1977 memoirs, My
Story, she described how she arranged a meeting between Kennedy
when he was running for the presidency and Giancana in April 1960,
as a result of which the mobster sent an aide, Paul "Skinny"
D'Amato, to West Virginia to buy support for Kennedy in the Democratic
Party primary election there. She also hinted that Giancana had helped
Kennedy carry Illinois, which he won by a few thousand votes in the
Chicago area.
For many years, rumours
circulated that Judith Campbell had also been involved in a plot hatched
between her two lovers, Kennedy and Giancana, to kill the Cuban leader,
Fidel Castro. In 1991 she came forward and described how she had sat
on the edge of the bathtub in a Chicago hotel while the president
and the Mafia don talked in the bedroom.
In April, with Jackie Kennedy
away in Florida, Campbell was seeing Kennedy at his house on N Street
in Georgetown, the upmarket Washington DC suburb. One night Kennedy
asked Campbell to put him in touch with Sam Giancana, and within the
week JFK was meeting the Mafioso at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami
Beach to arrange mob help with his Democratic primary campaign in
West Virginia. After the break-up of her affairs with Kennedy and
Giancana, Campbell was afraid for her life and kept her archives under
the bed at her house in Newport Beach, California, guarded by a large
dog, with a pistol under her pillow.
Kennedy's involvement with
the Mob in a plot to kill the Cuban president has often been put forward
as one of the reasons for his own assassination in Dallas in November
1963.
Why does
Godfrey Hodgson believe the Mafia killed John F. Kennedy?
(H14)
Stephen Rivele,
transcript from The Men Killed Who Kennedy (1988)
The initial turning
point was the first meeting that I had with the French narcotics trafficker
at Leavenworth Penitentiary. His name was Christian David. He had
been a member of the old French Connection heroin network. He had
then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South
America known as the Latin Connection. And he had also been an intelligence
agent for a number of intelligence services around the world. In exchange
for my help in finding him an attorney to represent him against the
possibility of his deportation to France after he finished his sentence
at Leavenworth, he agreed to give me a certain amount of information
concerning the assassination based upon his own knowledge. The first
thing that he told me, very reluctantly and only after four or five
hours of my arguing with him, was that he was aware that there had
been a conspiracy to murder the president, and indeed in May or June
of 1963 in Marseilles, he had been offered the contract to kill President
Kennedy. That was the initial breakthrough, if you will. He was eventually
deported to France. I remained in contact with him. I went to Paris
to interview him in two prisons in Paris. And in the fear that he
would be either committed to an asylum or that he would be convicted
of an old murder charge, he gradually gave me additional information
about the assassination.
David’s position was
that there were three killers, and that they had been hired on a contract
which had been placed with the leader of the Corsican Mafia at Marseilles,
a man named Antoine Guerini. Guerini, he said, was asked to supply
three assassins of high quality, experienced killers to murder the
President, and that Guerini did so. In the course of one of the first
significant conversations I had with David on this subject, he told
me that he had been in Marseilles in May or June of 1963, and that
every evening he went to Antoine Guerini’s club on the old Port
of Marseilles to meet people who owed him money. And one evening,
Guerini sent for him, asked him to come to the office which was above
the club. Guerini told him that he had an important contract, and
he asked David if he were interested. David said, "Who’s
the contract on?" Guerini said, "an American politician."
David asked, "Well is it a congressman, a senator?" And
Guerini said, "higher than that... The highest vegetable."
At that point of course David knew who he was talking about. David
asked him where was the contract to be carried out. And when Guerini
said it would be done inside the United States, David refused on the
grounds that that was much too dangerous.
Why did
Christian David refuse the contract to kill John F. Kennedy?
(H15)
Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason (1998)
In May or June of
1963, he was offered a contract by Antoine Guerini, the Corsican crime
boss in Marseilles, to accept a contract to kill "a highly placed
American politician" whom Guerini called the "biggest vegetable"-
i.e., President Kennedy. The president was to be killed on US territory.
David told Rivele that he turned down the contract because it was
too dangerous. After David turned down the contract offer, he said
it was accepted by Lucien Sarti, another Corsican drug trafficker
and killer, and two other members of the Marseilles mob, whom he refused
to name. David said he learned what happened about two years after
the assassination in a meeting in Buenos Aires, during which Sarti,
another drug trafficker named Michele Nicoli, David, and two others
were present. During the meeting, the assassination of John F. Kennedy
was discussed. This is how the assassination was carried out as David
told it to Rivele.
About two weeks before
the assassination, Sarti flew from France to Mexico City, from where
he drove or was driven to the US border at Brownsville, Texas. Sarti
crossed at Brownsville where he was picked up by someone from the
Chicago mafia. This person drove him to a private house in Dallas.
He did not stay at a hotel, as not to leave records. David believes
that Sarti was traveling on an Italian passport. David said the assassins
cased Dealey Plaza, took photographs and worked out mathematically
how to set up a crossfire. Sarti wanted to fire from the triple underpass
bridge, but when he arrived in Dealey Plaza the day of the assassination,
there were people there, so he fired from a little hill next to the
bridge. There was a wooden fence on that hill, and Sarti fired from
behind the wooden fence. He said Sarti only fired once, and used an
explosive bullet. He said Kennedy was shot in a crossfire, two shots
from behind, and Sarti's shot from the front. Of the two assassins
behind, one was high, and one was low. He said you can't understand
the wounds if you don't realize that one gun was low, "almost
on the horizontal." The first shot was fired from behind and
hit Kennedy in the back. The second shot was fired from behind, and
hit "the other person in the car." The third shot was fired
from in front, and hit Kennedy in the head. The fourth shot was from
behind and missed "because the car was too far away." He
said that two shots were almost simultaneous.
David said that Kennedy
was killed for revenge and money. He said the CIA was incapable of
killing Kennedy, but did cover it up. He said the gunmen stayed at
the private house in Dallas for approximately two weeks following
the assassination, then believes they went to Canada, that there were
people in Canada who had the ability to fly them out of North America.
According
to Noel Twyman, who killed John F. Kennedy?
(H16)
As a result of his research Stephen Rivele
came to the conclusion that the plot to kill
John
F. Kennedy
involved Antoine
Guerini, Carlos
Marcello,
Santos Trafficante and
Lucien Sarti.
My own conviction at this
point is that the contract probably originated with Carlos Marcello
of New Orleans who placed it in Marseilles through his colleague Santo
Trafficante, who had the closest relations with Antoine Guérini.
Beyond that, it seems reasonable that Giancana of Chicago was involved
if we accept Christian David and Michel Nicoli’s idea that the
assassins were met at the border by representatives of the Chicago
Mafia. And the fact that Sarti’s customers were primarily in
New York, and the fact that the assassins evidently moved out of the
United States through the Montreal corridor, which was very closely
linked to the New York Mafia, also suggests that Gambino may have
been involved.
Who did
Stephen Rivele believe organized the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
(H17)
Louis
Stokes,
House
Select Committee on Assassinations
(September 28, 1978)
In 1967, 1971, 1976, and 1977, those 4 years, columnist Jack Anderson
wrote about the CIA-Mafia plots and the possibility that Castro decided
to kill President Kennedy in retaliation. Mr. Anderson even contends
in those articles that the same persons involved in the CIA-Mafia
attempts on Castro's life were recruited by Castro to kill President
Kennedy. The September 7, 1976 issue of the Washington Post
contains one of Mr. Anderson's articles entitled, "Behind John
F. Kennedy's Murder," which fully explains Mr. Anderson's position.
I ask, Mr. Chairman, that at this point this article be marked as
JFK exhibit F-409 and that it be entered into the record at this point.
Mr. Trafficante, I want
to read to you just two portions of the article I have just referred
to, after which I will ask for your comment. According to Mr. Anderson
and Mr. Whitten in this article, it says: 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. By Roselli's cryptic account,
Castro learned the identity of the underworld contacts in Havana who
had been trying to knock him off. He believed, not altogether without
basis, that President Kennedy was behind the plot. Then over in another
section, it says: According to Roselli, Castro enlisted the same underworld
elements whom he had caught plotting against him. They supposedly
were Cubans from the old Trafficante organization. Working with Cuban
intelligence, they allegedly lined up an ex-Marine sharpshooter, Lee
Harvey Oswald, who had been active in the pro-Castro movement. According
to Roselli's version, Oswald may have shot Kennedy or may have acted
as a decoy while others ambushed him from closer range. When Oswald
was picked up, Roselli suggested the underworld conspirators feared
he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This
almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the
Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald making it appear
as an act of reprisal against the President's killer. At least this
is how Roselli explained the tragedy in Dallas.
How does
Jack Anderson's theory differ from the one put forward by Robert Blakey?
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