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Behind the Gemstone Files |
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The
Skeleton Key AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
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UPDATED
January 01, 2003 02:46 PM
It took another six months for Giancana to come to grips with the reality that, for him at least, Camelot was no more. The king of deception had been suckered - big time - by a two-bit rumrunner and his arrogant young sons. Murray Humphreys was no longer welcome at the White House. The Kennedys had suddenly snubbed Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, refusing even to accept Sinatra's invitation to vacation at his new Palm Springs estate. It was Peter Lawford, a Kennedy relative, who was "nominated" to tell Sinatra he was no longer welcome. Sinatra was angry and confused. Why? he wondered. He had always supported Jack Kennedy. But Giancana knew. His outburst at the Chicago airport the summer before had been enough to let Kennedy know Giancana had evidence - real, hard evidence. It was easy to put two and two together, especially after J. Edgar Hoover presented Bobby with a 13-page report highlighting Sinatra's connections to Giancana. Kennedy knew his sexual orgies had been taped and filmed - and Sinatra, knowingly or unknowingly, had set him up. Giancana, instead of blaming his own outburst, blamed Sinatra, and told his brother he was thinking of having Sinatra hit, but then changed his mind. "I guess I like the guy. Shit, it's not his fault that the Kennedys are assholes. But if I didn't like him, you can be goddamned sure he'd be a dead man." (1:427-28) Amazingly, Giancana and Kennedy were so much alike. They both lived dangerously, recklessly even, and both refused to accept responsibility for their own actions, always quick to place the blame on someone else. And both felt themselves invincible, invulnerable, perhaps even immortal. They could get away with anything. Privately, J. Edgar Hoover had been hearing some unhappy things from the generals and admirals about Kennedy's behavior, not in the bedroom (Hoover already had all of that) but about secret overtures to the Russians, rumblings of changes in Vietnam. The military felt Kennedy was a communist, a traitor. There were funny things going on in Cuba - like Russian missiles being planted - and Kennedy was just sitting on it, refusing to act. The CIA agreed, though they didn't communicate that to Hoover; they weren't even on speaking terms. Their feelings were made known through Hoover's military friends. Kennedy was planning an "October surprise" to enhance the party's chances in the off-year elections - but at the cost of dangerously escalating a Soviet nuclear threat only 90 miles away. The military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies at the federal level had always shared one common belief: presidents come and go and are ruled by politics, not reality. The safety of the nation would always lie in the hands of the triumvirate - military, intelligence and law enforcement. The man in the White House, unless he came from their own ranks like Eisenhower did, was always kept at arm's length. Eisenhower knew this and played the game well, but had stunned them when, in departing, he warned the nation of a "military-industrial complex" that, in his view, posed a deep and serious threat to national security. The time had come for Kennedy to be informed who was really in charge. Feb. 14, 1962 - President Kennedy announced that military advisers in Vietnam would fire if fired upon. Privately, he began to wonder what the hell he was getting himself - and the country - into. March 1962 - It took Hoover, in a private meeting in March 1962, to bring Kennedy back to earth with a jolt. Quietly, without a word, he handed the president a folder. When Kennedy opened it and spread it slowly out across his desk, he saw photos of Judith Campbell - and himself - in "a compromising position." He saw the transcripts of their sex sessions. And then he saw the photos of Campbell and Giancana in the sack together. This was evidence provided by syndicate informants, Hoover said, his voice hiding his glee at Kennedy's visible embarrassment. The president was endangering himself and national security by bedding down a Mafia moll - and Giancana had the proof. He discreetly suggested that the president was subjecting himself to blackmail. Hoover presented himself as Kennedy's "protector," having come across information that could damage the president (and by extension, national security), was doing no more than his patriotic and legal duty to protect that national security. What went unspoken, but which Kennedy was aware of, was that if Kennedy himself personally benefited from Hoover's "protection," well, that was just his luck - and not part of Hoover's "responsibility to the nation." Hoover didn't mention that he had finally figured out how William "Action" Jackson had been wiped out as an FBI informant (by JFK sending Giancana the FBI reports), nor did he mention that the photos and transcripts had come from Giancana's own wireman, who obeyed two paymasters - Giancana and the CIA. The CIA was getting a duplicate copy everything Giancana was getting. Hoover had infiltrated the CIA - as they had infiltrated the FBI - knowing they couldn't protest because they weren't supposed to be engaged in "internal operations" in the first place, and that's how he let himself into the CIA-Giancana secret. Nor did Hoover mention that his own stunning presentation to Kennedy was also blackmail, but from a far more dangerous source than Giancana. They were now a part of the legendary "secret Hoover files." Kennedy had learned Giancana had the goods, but now he had to wonder who else also knew - and what threat did they pose to his political power? Did Hoover know he'd been screwing Marilyn Monroe since the 1960 Democratic Convention? He began to look with suspicion at everyone around him, and his circle of trusted advisors grew smaller and smaller until finally it included only his brother, Bobby, those who had shared equally in his guilt and had as much to lose as he. Bobby was now bedding Marilyn, beginning this very month. (1:434) Did Hoover know? Did Jack even know? Were he and his brother keeping score with each other in some perverted game - or were they keeping their scores private as part of a complex sibling rivalry? Kennedy refused to accept any more of Judith Campbell's phone calls. Word came down that Joe Adonis would not be allowed back into the country as promised. The confidential memos stopped coming to Giancana. Kennedy thought he had finally wrestled free of his father's iron will, and could now do things "his way." Suddenly, he was face to face with the reality that he had a new boss, same as the old boss, but who had ruled a lot longer and with more steel than even his own father. Hoover assured Kennedy "your secrets are safe with me, Mr. President." But Jack Kennedy knew from the trace of Hoover's smirk that that safety would only come at a price unspoken. Hoover knew all of his secrets - the Nazi spy he had become enamored with, the hidden and annulled marriage, Joe's rum-running and drug and mob deals - all of it. Hoover enjoyed a newfound "respect" and was treated more deferentially than ever - but he was also hated more than ever. Like so many presidents before him, Kennedy found he was a slave to Hoover's "secret files." No one knew how many there were, or where they were kept, and no one dared ask too many questions or pry too deeply to find them until his death 12 years later. By then it was too late. May 1962 - Despite becoming a non-person at the White House, Giancana could still do no wrong in the eyes of the CIA. He had assisted not only with the Castro assassination plots, but with continued Cuban exile training, as well as operations in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, setting up CIA drug-smuggling operations that helped fund their black budget without costing the taxpayers a penny. With Carlo Gambino, he had put them in good stead with the ultra-conservative Opus Dei in the Vatican and with Sicilian financial genius and Vatican consultant Michele Sindona. The CIA made large and regular contributions to many Catholic charities - legal or illegal. In May, the CIA had gone to great risks to get a Las Vegas wiretap case against Giancana and Bob Maheu dropped. (Maheu had bugged the apartment of comedian Dan Rowan after Giancana heard Rowan was screwing Phyllis McGuire). "They risked their jobs for me to get it handled ... Now that's what I call loyalty," Giancana said in admiration, surprised he could still have respect for any government agency. (1:431) The charges had been dropped only after Robert Kennedy was informed that Maheu and Giancana were the CIA "assets" who had been making the attempted hits on Castro. Kennedy was livid, not over the assassination plots - which he had approved - but because of who had been selected to carry them out, which he hadn't been told and didn't want to know. But there was a catch. Giancana could not use any of the material he had gathered in his Kennedy wiretaps. For one, it would expose the relationship between The Outfit and The Company. That had come too damned close to happening in the Dan Rowan case, when Maheu had been caught with CIA equipment unavailable to civilians. Second, that technology itself could not be exposed or discovered. If Giancana's men were ever caught again, Kennedy would recognize the technology as being of CIA origin and the threat "to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces" would more than come true. Giancana had to bow to their logic. They were right and in their position he would have to made the same call. All of his blackmail work had been for nothing; it could never be used. After alternately moping and raging for several days, Giancana got an idea and called an old friend, Joe Schenck (some researchers have spelled it Shenk). Joe had been the man who had discovered Marilyn Monroe - and he was doing a lot more with her than that. Giancana knew Schenck from the old days, when the Browne-Bioff scandal rocked Hollywood. Of course, by the time he finally bedded her, he was old (at 70), but still a powerful force in Tinseltown. Giancana claimed that it was he who introduced him to Monroe, after she had actually been "discovered" by the suave ladies' man John Roselli. Roselli told Giasncana he was impressed with her, Giancana made the connections, then continued to push her career through producer Harry Cohn, both Schenck and Cohn enjoying her, uh, "private favors" in exchange for two-bit parts on the silver screen. Monroe was now big time after her nude calendar and the movie All About Eve. Niagara pushed her over the line into full-fledged stardom. Giancana had sampled her wares often and observed, with some compassion that was out of character for him, that she was sadly driven, more comfortable with her clothes off than on, trading herbody and soul for what she imagined was success and fame. Even though he'd been told in May he couldn't use the results of the CIA-equipped wiretapping and bugging surveillance for blackmail, Giancana wasn't told he couldn't keep doing, so he had Bernie Spindel keep the tapes rolling. If nothing else, the copies kept J. Edgar Hoover titillated. Bernie had all of Jack Kennedy's sex toys - Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer (wife of a top CIA official), Angie Dickinson and Marilyn Monroe. Guy Banister had told him about Hoover paying Kennedy a visit with the Campbell file, but he also told him that Kennedy-Monroe was heating up - and, yes, Hoover knew all about it. Hoover's guys had first picked up on it at the Democratic National Convention in 1962 - and had then discovered that in March 1962, Bobby Kennedy began bedding her as well.
Giancana's mind was whirling with possibilities as he accepted the job. He couldn't use the tapes to blackmail Kennedy, but maybe he could use a dead Hollywood sex symbol to accomplish the same purpose: kill Monroe and see that Kennedy got blamed. July 1962 - At a hunting-fishing camp owned by Carlos Marcello on Grand Isle near the Gulf of Mexico, Marcello and friends and family were fishing, when a black caretaker was stunned to overhear Marcello launch into a tirade over Robert Kennedy in front of a group of friends at an outdoor picnic table. "Don't talk about dat sonofabitch Bobby to me!" he screamed. "You know he's driving my wife fuckin' crazy. All Jackie do is cry all night thinkin' Kennedy is goin' to throw me outa the country again ... Bobby is drivin' my daughters crazy, too. They don't want to lose their Daddy ... Well, I'll tell you boys they ain't goin' to lose their ole man. No, Sir. 'Cause I gotta plan. You wait an' see if that sonofabitch Bobby Kennedy is gonna take me away from my wife and kids." (36:32) July 28, 1962 - A week before her death, Monroe flew to Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge. Giancana had invited her. Among the other guests were Frank Sinatra and "Peter the Rabbit" Lawford, as Giancana teased him regarding his sexual aggressiveness. Mariolyn drank herself into a stupor that night at dinner, pouring out her woes to an attentive Giancana, who usually didn't care to listen to women's problems. Bobby was refusing her calls, she wept. She'd even tried to see him at home in Virginia, but that had just sent the recent "Family Man of the Year" into a rage. Both Bobby and Jack regarded her as "nothing more than a piece of meat," she sobbed. That night Gancana bedded her for the last time, then as he stood zipping his pants up, looked down at her and smiled. He'd had her body many times. Now he would have her life - and Kennedy would pay his own price. Aug. 4, 1962 - Bobby Kennedy was coming to California, the CIA told Giancana, to settle his affairs with Marilyn and the timing would be perfect to bring her down, according to later account by Charles Nicoletti. (1:437) Giancana immediately flew to Palm Springs, supposedly for a party at Sinatra's house. Three other planes landed in San Francisco the week of August 4. Needles Gianola was brought in to coordinate the job. Needles brought along his trusted sidekick, Mugsy Tortorella. Two other assassins departed - one from Kansas City and one from Detroit. They were Marilyn Monroe's hit team. From a nearby van, where Bernie Spindel was manning the voice bugs, they waited for Bobby Kennedy to show up. When he did, late that Saturday, he was with another man. Listening life as the tapes were being made, Sam Giancana's men heard Marilyn explode at Kennedy, screaming at him for ignoring her, making hysterical threats to go public and ruin his career. Kennedy told the man with him to "give her a shot to calm her down." And then they left. Sam's hit team waited until after dark, just before midnight, when they picked the lock and walked in, according to the account Giancana gave his brother years later. She struggled but was too doped up from the injection given her by the Kennedy guy to put up much resistance. Sam's team rolled her over on her stomach and with rubber-gloved hands "and with all the efficiency of a team of surgeons" they taped her mouth shut and jammed a specially 'doctored' Nembutal suppository into her anus." Then they waited. The suppository had come from the CIA - actually from that same University of Illinois chemist who had concocted all the anti-Castro poisons. The chemists instructions were precise. It had to be be given anally. Forcing it down her orally would have resulted in bruises as she fought back, and bruises would arouse suspicion later. Also, it would probably cause her to vomit and in doing so might lose its lethal concentration. If she should be found still alive, an anal application would eliminate any possibility of reviving her. It would enter the bloodstream quickly through the anal membrane. Any rescue attempts would be focused on her mouth or stomach; this way there would be nothing in the stomach to remove. Also, a suppository would leave no needle marks that might arouse the suspicion of an overly-inquisitive medical examiner. Within moments, the combination of barbiturates and chloryl hydrate completely knocked her out. The team removed the tape on her mouth, cleaned her mouth with alcohol and placed her across the bed, then left as silently as they had come. Giancana sat back and waited for the news to break - along with the story of Marilyn's affair with the president's brother. He couldn't use his blackmail evidence, but he could count on a lot of public attention to the death of Marilyn Monroe. (1:437-38) [NOTE: At first I was tempted to think perhaps sodium morphate (not it's true name) had been used, especially because of the vomiting aspect, but later I learned what the true chemical concoction was and had to abandon that theory.] Once more, he greatly under-estimated the Kennedy determination to separate themselves from their misdeeds. Giancana and his team had expected a lot of neighbors, police, press and publicity. Instead, what they saw after Kennedy learned of her death was a team of FBI agents. Kennedy had panicked at the thought of being possibly charged with her murder; he thought he had been responsible when he had his accomplice give her a shot. He called Peter Lawford and Fred Otash (unaware Otash was working for Giancana spying on him) to sweep and clean the house before the police were called.
Angleton was happy, simply because he was a man with an insatiable appetite for gossip and the diary fed his suspicions that there were communist moles in the White House. Hoover was happy because he now had even more goods on his bosses. The Kennedys were happy because they had covered up a murder they thought they'd been responsible for, but weren't. Only Giancana was once more left out in the cold. His last, best shot was blown. He was unable to use the damned wiretap/bugging evidence. And the Kennedys were as untouchable as ever. It would be years before the Kennedy-Monroe romance would become public, oozing out slowly like mold from the woodwork. In 1962, it was promptly ruled "suicide" and a gullible public not exposed to the treachery of Dallas, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Enron and Sept. 11 still believed what their government told them. By October, the sex goddess that had rocked Hollywood would be forgotten and moldering in her grave. Life is fickle. Oddly, Bruce Roberts never mentioned Marilyn Monroe, as important as it was in the plot to get rid of Kennedy. August 1962 - The IRS hit Carlos Marcello with a lien for $835,396, naming his wife's assets as well. He faced two federal indictments and a new deportation order. Two of his top men, Ed Levinson and Gilbert Beckley, were under indictment. He tried to get Sinatra to intervene with the Kennedys, but the attempt failed, and Bobby Kennedy just intensified his efforts. The director of the Bureau of Narcotics had been replaced, and the new man joined RFK in his anti-Mafia crusade. Privately, Marcello decided it was time to make concrete plans for an assassination - but it would have to be Jack Kennedy, not his brother, if the plan were to remove the government from their backs. (36:33) Late August 1962 - Sam Giancana was no longer the cocky boss. He was becoming a tired old man, beaten at his own game, weary, his vulnerability now exposed to all his associates. On the surface, they continued to show him respect, but in their eyes he could see he had lost it. He had failed to deliver. By wanting Kennedy "for himself," he had to bear the blame alone. Had Nixon won, he would have been owned by all of them, and any blame would have been spread equally. "That mick cocksucker, Bobby, we got him on the wire calling me a guinea greaseball ... can you believe that? My millions were good enough for 'em, weren't they? The votes I muscled for 'em were good enough to get Jack elected. So now I'm a fuckin' greasball, am I?" He smiled thinly, and his eyes narrowed into small cobra-like slits as he stood up with one final word. "Well, I'm gonna send them a message they'll never forget." (1:430) Thus it was that the plan (they would never call it a plot, for they looked upon it both as honorable patriotism and as business as usual) to kill the president of the United States was born. It didn't start so much as a "conspiracy" in the true sense of the word; it was more of a spontaneous consensus that developed , independently, in several places like the military, the CIA, organized crime, and certainly the anti-Castro exiles who felt they had been betrayed at the Bay of Pigs. Add to this those scattered wealthy, conservative industrialists like H. L. Hunt (who would later almost success in cornering America's silver market), and those who saw the Kennedys as competition (e.g., Rockefellers). Then you add to that the growing consensus among those at the very highest levels of power that Kennedy was becoming a loose cannon. First, he didn't play by the rules; he wanted to make his own rules. Second, his own growing instability over whether he would "keep the secrets" of activities we can't even begin to talk about here, even now, was beginning to pose a threat to the direction and agenda of the New World Order. Third, combined with these concerns was the factor that Kennedy seemed well on his way to creating a White House dynasty that might seriously interrupt their schedule, perhaps even fatally. Kennedy surrounded himself with a new generation of advisors, thinking he had set a course of independence from the old advisors, like John and Allen Dulles. But he didn't realize they had all been trained and indoctrinated by the same Puppet Master. The faces may have changed, but the "higher power" to which he would have to commit his presidency was the same. Otherwise, he faced "Seven Days in May." While the consensus that Kennedy had to go took hold and spread, there were some who did not immediately think an assassination was necessary. The reader, the student of history, has to realize that what was about to happen was not some "government conspiracy" in the way that we have come to think of government conspiracy. It wasn't like Watergate, for example, where schemes were plotted in "official" circles. It was born more out of the private meetings, over drinks in public or private places. Unlike those grand conspiracies which follow a meticulous plan handed down from above, this one grew from the ground up, with each root connecting to the other much higher up the food chain. It was when these private feelings that "something has to be done about Kennedy" began to meet other such feelings that the realization came that - we have the resources to pull it off without anybody taking all the heat. The pieces are already there in place. Operation 40 is the operation to take Castro out. All the very same people - who felt betrayed from top to bottom - would only be too happy to change targets. But these were individuals acting, not agencies. All of these agencies - intelligence, military, law enforcement - were being torn apart by a series of events. There were those in the FBI who had long resented Hoover's hypocrisy and domineering ways, and were all too happy to join Jack and Robert Kennedy in finally going after organized crime. Likewise, there remained staunch and loyal Hoover supports who thought - and still do - that J, Edgar Hoover was all that stood between America and her enemies within. In the CIA, there was much dissension about the Castro hit squads. There were those who thought Kennedy was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs (E. Howard Hunt being one of them), just as there were those who were glad to see Dulles go. And there was a military that was still feeling the sting of defeat from Korea when they had been ordered by the politicians to do a job nobody could define. Some within the Pentagon looked forward to a Vietnam conflict as a way to regain the prestige they had had before Korea. Others looked at Vietnam as a probable repeat of Korea and wanted nothing to do with yet another humiliation. All of the vital agencies were fractured and paralyzed by division within. Because of it, they were screwing up and not doing their jobs well. The inter-agency wars would get so bad that CIA lieutenants at the level of E. Howard Hunt and Clay Shaw (who were equals in this hierarchy of power) would actually have to check their private planes for plastic explosives, because other factions within the CIA were trying to eliminate them and gain control. Even the CIA, within the US, was laid out in a geographical pattern, and certain trusted individuals were given control over certain territories - just like the Mafia on one of its good days. And so it was in this historical and organizational context of dysfunction that there was a power vacuum taken over by individuals, who pretty much had the liberty (and lack of oversight) to do what they pleased. They could make individual decisions as they wished, without having to go up through channels. At the same time, they had full access to the resources of these dysfunctional agencies (planes, arms, drugs, money, contacts) with which to carry out their own personal agendas. In the summer of 1962, the varied beliefs that "Kennedy has to go" coalesced into a movement as chaotic as the agencies from which it was spawned. All the paperwork and chain of command were in place, duly authorized by both Robert and John Kennedy. Any deviation from the target (Castro) could be hidden; the two targets (Castro and now Kennedy) could be woven into one operation - with no change in personal, methods or support. For the man in the White House, it would become the ultimate irony: his assassination would be carried out by an operation he himself had originally authorized - Operation 40. It became, at the top levels, an almost unspoken agreement - with the grim details to be left to the soldiers like John Roselli, Bob Maheu, Fred Fiorini, E. Howard Hunt, Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Banister, Jack Ruby and so on. Fall 1962 - Giancana told his brother, Chuck, to sell the Thunderbolt Lounge where they had shared so many secrets. Chuck was horrified; it was his sole source of income. He blamed the heavy FBI surveillance that had lasted throughout the summer and into the fall, but brother Sam had other reasons he didn't want Chuck to know. Things were afoot, and more drastic steps were underway to finally, once and for all, put an end to "the Kennedy menace." Sam went on about his global travels as if nothing had changed, and even opened a new nightclub called the Villa Venice in Wheeling, Illinois, just northwest of Chicago (it would be regarded as the most luxurious nightclub west of LasVegas), while Chuck stewed over losing the one project he had come to believe was his own and which had freed him from his dependence on "big brother." But that independence had been only an illusion - and that realization only made him more bitter. Opening night at Sam's new Villa Venice brought a star-studded lineup at a cost of $75,000 each - Eddie Fisher, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. Sam had tried to get mob lawyer Sidney Korshak to entice Dinah Shore into showing up, not necessarily to sing, but because of her reputation as a party animal to those who knew her and her clean, wholesome image to the rest of America, which didn't. Chuck and his wife went, but Chuck was only more embittered, seeing Sam flaunt his new club, while Chuck was once again without. Sam raked in $3 million that first month in tax-free profit. September 1962 - "In September...the Florida Mafia boss Santos Trafficante, Jr., one of the principals in the CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro, was meeting with Jose Aleman, Jr., a wealthy Cuban exile and a friend from Trafficante's Havana days, when the subject turned to the Kennedy's 'Have you seen how his brother is hitting Hoffa?,' Trafficante bitterly complained, '...this man Kennedy is in trouble, and he will get what is coming to him.' When Aleman suggested Kennedy probably wouldn't get re-elected, Trafficante replied, 'No, Jose, He is going to be hit'." (Interview between Jose Aleman, Jr. and George Crile III, Washington Post, 5/16/76) "...that month, Carlos Marcello met with two associates, Edward Becker and Carl Roppolo, at Churchill Farms, the Louisiana Mafia boss' 3,000-acre plantation outside New Orleans. It is likely that no one hated the Kennedys more than Marcello. Robert Kennedy had gone to extreme lengths to nail Marcello, even arranging for him to be kidnapped and deported to Guatemala. When he'd slipped back into the country, the attorney general had hit him with indictments for fraud, perjury, and illegal re-entry. All three men had been drinking heavily when Becker sympathetically remarked, 'Bobby Kennedy is really giving you a rough time.' 'Livarsi na petra di la scarpa!' Marcello exploded. 'Take the stone out of my shoe!' Marcello followed this old Sicilian curse with 'Don't worry about that little Bobby son of a bitch. He's going to be taken care of.' "Becker realized that Marcello was quite serious, that to him this was an affair of honor. He also realized that the assassination was already in the planning stage when Marcello said he was thinking of using 'a nut,' an outsider who could be used or manipulated to carry out the hit, rather than one of his own lieutenants. But Marcello wasn't talking about assassinating Robert Kennedy: the target was to be his brother, the President..." [Contract on America-144:81] The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America by Ed Reid - Bantam 1970; Assassination Hearings Id, Vol IX; Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy by David E. Scheim - Zebra Books 1989; Hoover Ibid This account is confirmed by Frank Ragano, Trafficante's lawyer for many years, with some variances. First, he says Marcello's Churchill Farms was 6,400 acres, not 3,000. He provides more details: Present at the meeting were Carlo Roppolo, a close personal friend from Shreveport; Edward Becker, an acquaintance of Roppolo from Las Vegas; and Jack Liberto, a hulking bodyguard who was Marcello's personal barber. Roppolo and Becker were seeing Marcello about a business deal. They wanted Marcello's support (permission). The four men were drinking scotch and eating antipasti in the farmhouse kitchen when Becker mentioned reading in the papers about Bobby's plans to deport Marcello. That is when Marcello jumped up from the table and, in Sicilian, shouted "Get the stone out of my shoe!" He then went on. "You know what they say in Sicili: If you want to kill a dog, you don't cut off the tail, you cut off the head." (NOTE: It is this quote that Roberts erroneously credits to Onassis.) He said you had to think of the president as the head and his brother as the tail. "The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail, but if the dog's head is cut off the dog will die, tail and all." Marcello went on to explain his plan. If he used his own men on the frontlines, Kennedy would easily blame him. He would have to use, or manipulate, someone not identified with the Marcello family, who could be quickly pounced on and blamed by police. He had already thought of a way to set up "a nut" to take the heat "the way they do in Sicily." (36:34-35) Becker said he heard this himself. What Marcello did not know was that Becker was an FBI informant and went straight to the FBI with his information. His business partner in a Los Angeles detective agency was Julian Blodgett, an ex-FBI agent who still did contract work for the FBI. It was Blodgett he went to; Blodgett was in daily contact with the FBI, and was certain to have passed it on through channels to Hoover himself. (36:35-36) But Hoover also wanted to get rid of the Kennedys, and so he kept silent and let the plot unfold, making Hoover, at the very least, an accessory before the fact. Just a few days later, Marcello discussed his plan with Santos Trafficante. Another FBI informant, Jose Aleman, the wealthy son of a former Cuban cabinet minister who had made millions from the Mob, was a close associate of Trafficante. Aleman was active in the anti-Castro exile movement and most likely knew of the Castro assassination plots; he may have even been involved. He met with Trafficante in Miami over dinner to negotiate a $1.5 million loan he needed to finance a large condominium project. He thought Trafficante could help get Hoffa to loan him the money. Hoffa had tentatively approved it, but said he needed Trafficante's OK. They met at Miami's Scott Bryant Hotel, which Aleman also owned. During the conversation, Trafficante digressed a bit from the loan and started talking about Hoffa and the Kennedys: "Have you seen how his brother is hitting Hoffa, a man who is not a millionare, a friend of the blue collars? He doesn't know that this kind of encounter is very delicate. ... Hoffa is a hard-working man and does not deserve it. Mark my word, this man Kennedy is in trouble, and he will get what is coming to him." Aleman took issue with Trafficante, saying he thought Kennedy was doing a good job, was well-liked and would probably be re-elected. "No, Jose, you don't understand me. Kennedy's not going to make it to the election. Kennedy's going to be hit." He could see Trafficante was dead serious and that it wasn't just idle talk - a plan was already underway. Aleman went to the FBI office and told Agents George Davis and Paul Scranton, who told their superior, Miami SAIC Wesley G. Grapp, who sent it to Hoover via AIRTEL. Again, Hoover refused to act on the information or even pass it on to the attorney general or the president. (36:37-38) Sep. 29, 1962 - Edward Partin, Louisiana Teamsters official and an aide to Hoffa, passed along the same information to Walter Sheridan, a Justice Department aide to Robert Kennedy. He then told the president, who later mentioned his "deep concern" about the plot to then-Washington Bureau Chief of Newsweek, Ben Bradlee one evening over dinner. (36:38) Not long before his death, Kennedy did two things that might be seen as a premonition that he may be assassinated. Half-jokingly, once in public while surrounded by dignitaries and aides, he commented to the effect that, "You know if someone shoots at me, they'll probably hit you first, don't you?' He also pantomimed his own assassination in a private home movie at one of the Kennedy homes (either Hyannisport or Palm Beach), falling down on the dock as if mortally wounded. He loved danger, and loved living recklessly. To him, it was a game of cops and robbers. Privately, he knew it was more - much more. Oct. 22, 1962 - Kennedy revealed a Soviet military build-up in Cuba and orders a naval blockade on Russian military ships heading to the island. The "October Surprise" was just unwrapped. Kennedy had been in possession of intelligence information on this since February or April, and the military-intelligence community was wondering why he refused to act. He was planning to use it for partisan political purposes in the November elections. The women he bedded claimed Kennedy liked to "live dangerously." He needed the thrill of violence and of confrontation - in foreign affairs as well as in sex he had to take risks. It was the Kennedy way, as exemplified by the press coverage the family got of its mountain-climbing trips, white water rafting, and all the dangerous exploits that burnished the image of Kennedy bravery and bravado, the mystique of Camelot and its daring King Arthur. His recklessness angered conservative generals and admirals who felt the threat should have been dealt with much sooner and much more directly. Over the next six days there would be several demands for a nuclear attack on not only Cuba, but the Soviet Union as well. Oct. 28, 1962 - Kennedy and Krushchev sign an agreement to end the Cubam Missile Crisis. The US will remove aging NATO missiles from Turkey pointing at Moscow; Krushchev will remove the Cuban missiles. Just a few years later, this reporter was personally given intelligence information, including aerial and ground-based photographs, that Russian missiles remained buried in underground bases in Cuba that had been overlooked. The above-ground missiles had been a red herring, designed to steer US attention away from the underground construction. Kennedy, suspicious of the CIA and the information it was now providing him, refused to believe the red herring data given him. He chose the simpler response, just as Krushchev had hoped. It made Kennedy look tough just before the elections (and helped restore the grace lost during the Bay of Pigs) and it helped Krushchev get rid of our unwanted missiles in Turkey. Nov. 2, 1962 - Kennedy announced Soviet missile bases in Cuba were now being dismantled. The world had come perilously close to nuclear war, he said, and the Americans and the Russians "stood eyeball to eyeball ... and the Russians blinked." They then went home and had a good laugh - at our expense. Oddly, it was a case of America saying, "do as we say, not as we do." Moving missiles into Cuba, just 90 miles from our borders, was no different than the US moving missiles right up to Russia's borders. The ploy worked. The American voters fell for it hook, line and sinker to "stand behind their president in time of conflict" and the Democrats reversed the normal situation where, in an off-year election, the party in power loses House and/or Senate seats. In 1962's November election, just hours after the Nov. 2 announcement, the Democrats actually managed to eke out small gains in both houses of Congress. But in the aftermath, something dark and evil took root, something known as Project Northwoods, dreamed up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and actually handed to Kennedy for his refusal. He was horrified and said under no circumstances would he approve something like that. It was a plan to, among many other things, kill innocent Americans onboard commercial airliners - and blame it on the enemy as a pretext for invasion. It became the blueprint for a plan even more hideous - September 11, 2001. (For the full story of what really happened Sept. 11, read the author's forthcoming book Big Oil - Big War.) Despite the plan's growing blackness of evil over the years, it was - as the plan itself revealed in its defense - no different than what Roosevelt had done to precipitate World War II. Despite Kennedy's insistence, the plan was not destroyed, only put on the shelf to gather dust until, under later administrations, it would be pulled out, dusted off and carried out.
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June
1962 - Marilyn Monroe had fallen in love and this women who was
lusted after by millions was being rejected yet again. Bobby would
not get a divorce and marry her. She had started drinking, she
wasn't showing up on the set of her latest movie (and indeed was
fired because of it) and her career was beginning to falter. She was
looking for a security beyond her body. She wanted some respect.
While Bob Maheu and Fred Otash kept the tapes rolling, they began to
wonder if the sex siren was beginning to come unglued, a loose
cannon that could blow up in their faces. Not only was she becoming
a threat to the Kennedys, as evidenced by her tantrums on tape, she
was becoming a threat to the CIA-Mafia link about which she knew too
much. She had threatened Bobby that she would "blow the lid off
the whole damned thing" - and that was the signing of her death
warrant. The CIA asked Giancana to get rid of her. They couldn't
afford to have their fingerprints anywhere on it, not with JFK being
involved, and not after the Bay of Pigs.
When
police arrived, there were no love notes, no damning phone numbers,
no fingerprints - and most disappointing to Giancana, no diary.
Everything that might have been cleaned out ended up in Hoover's
private files. Kennedy was told no incriminating evidence had been
found. The diary was spirited away by the CIA and ended up in the
hands of James J. Angleton (at right).