The French Connection
About ten years ago, The History Channel prsented a show titled, "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." It was a five-part show investigating the Kennedy assassination. One of the episodes that I found very intriguing, was a story on investigative journalist, Stephen Rivele. Rivele had become interested in the CIA's Executive Action program and started his own investigation, plunging him into the history of the CIA's collaboration with organized crime and drug traffickers. This led him to a man called Christian David.
David had been a member of the French Connection network and leader of the Corsican network in South America known as the Latin Connection. When Rivele first interviewed David, David was awaiting extradition to France to stand trial for murdering a policeman. David told Rivele that he had information on the Kennedy assassination, in return for which he wanted a deal with the U.S. government to block his extradition to France. He said he would tell all he knew to a grand jury. Through Rivele's efforts, a federal judge temporarily halted David's extradition, but when the federal government found out, it got the judge to lift his stay of extradition. Rivele followed, and through repeated interviews, was able to get at least some of David's story. What follows is David's story.
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 U.S. territory. David told Rivele that he turned down the contract because it was to 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 U.S. 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.
Rivele wanted to verify David's story, so he went in search of Michele Nicoli, who had been with the group when the assassination was discussed. Rivele made contact with Nicoli after a lengthy search in North and South America. He was aided in his search by a high-level official in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Nicoli, who testified against French Connection members in 1972, was living under the Witness Protection Program. The DEA official vouched for Nicoli's truthfulness in the strongest terms, saying that he had proven himself to be one of the most reliable witnesses over the years that the DEA had experienced, saying that if he told you something, "you could take it to the bank."
Nicoli told Rivele and the DEA official essentially the same story as had David. Nicoli said that the mafia in the U.S. had hired Sarti. The DEA official turned the information over to the FBI, but nothing has been done to date. Rivele has received death threats, and lived incognito in California for several years. Lucien Sarti was killed by Mexican police in 1972. The identity of his two accomplices remains unknown. Christian David is still alive and in prison in France, and has also received death threats.