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The Mob Did It (We Think)
As the century ended, a congressionally mandated Assassination Records Review Commission opened some classified records, but many critical records, in the United States and in Cuba, remain secret to this day.
In their new book, Waldron and Hartmann report that our government had a secret plan for a high Cuban insider (named in their new book) to kill Fidel Castro on December 1, 1963—just days after JFK was assassinated. It would be followed by an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles aided by the U. S. military. It was managed off the books by Robert Kennedy and a select group of government officials and the military. The mafia learned of it, and after its furtive, aborted plans to kill Kennedy weeks earlier in Chicago and Tampa failed, they arranged for him to be killed in Texas, knowing that our government could not disclose these facts without admitting its own provocative plans and endangering worldwide retaliation. It was, assassination expert Jefferson Morley quipped in The Washington Post, “a deus ex mafia”.
Waldron’s and Hartmann’s new revelations in Legacy of Secrecy add newly released government recordings of Carlos Marcello in prison, claiming to have arranged the assassination. Trafficante’s and Rosselli’s attorneys both have reported that their clients claimed responsibility for the assassination. Along with Marcello’s confession, and credible information that has eked out from mentioned sources, the evidence points to a conspiracy case that could go to a jury—were the parties alive.
Interviews with Kennedy aide Dave Powers, who rode close behind the president in the fatal motorcade, disclosed that he saw and heard evidence of shots from the grassy knoll, and that he was subject to “intense pressure to get him to change his testimony ‘for the good of the country’.” Presidential assistant Kenneth O’Donnell agreed. Later sound, visual, and medical studies—persuasive but controverted—confirm their and other on-the-scene observers’ opinions, and the Edward Epstein thesis.
The Waldron-Hartmann books suggest why the grieving Attorney General and the powerful government authorities at the time failed to aggressively pursue all leads based on the government’s prior dealing with the mob. Robert Kennedy could not pursue them because his own misconduct would have come to light, and knowledge of it would have had serious foreign policy implications. Those few investigative officials who knew of the critical facts had every reason to hide them.
The Warren Commission relied in its investigation on the obvious investigating authorities at the time, the FBI and CIA. Both agencies, especially the CIA, had intramural interests for dissembling and hiding the true facts. Lyndon Johnson later questioned that conclusion, his aides reported. RFK told aides he would pursue the true facts when he became president.
A German documentary film, Rendezvous With Death, included an interview with a former Cuban secret service agent who said the Cuban Secret Service was responsible for the JFK assassination, using Oswald as its hired gun. After Fidel Castro is out of power, Cuban records—if they exist—could corroborate that story. Castro told an AP reporter days before the Kennedy assassination that he knew plans were afoot to assassinate him and that if the US pursued those plans—plans we know did exist, and which Waldron-Hartmann books document—our president’s life would be in danger. Days later that scenario played out. An American agent met a Cuban Castro assassin in Paris, and our president was shot.
The Waldron-Hartmann books do not resolve the case. Many more government records remain to be released. It is now nearly a half century later, and there is no good reason not to release the voluminous secret records which may clarify the important, continuing mystery behind this epic American tragedy. Hopefully, the new Obama administration will open all these records as part of its proclaimed policy of openness and transparency. Hiding information always raises suspicions. Open information policies are more likely to lead to truthful conclusions. It is time the world knew every bit of available information about the assassination of JFK.
Ronald Goldfarb is a veteran Washington, D.C., attorney, author and literary agent who worked in the Department of Justice as a special assistant to Robert F. Kennedy in the organized crime and racketeering section, and as a speechwriter for Kennedy’s Senate campaign in New York. He has written 11 books and 300 articles in addition to numerous op-eds and reviews (see www.RonaldGoldfarb.com).
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Ronald Goldfarb is a veteran Washington, D.C., attorney, author and literary agent who worked in the Department of Justice as a special assistant to Robert F. Kennedy in the organized crime and racketeering section, and as a speechwriter for Kennedy’s Senate campaign in New York. He has written 11 books and 300 articles in addition to numerous op-eds and reviews (see www.RonaldGoldfarb.com).
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Ronald Goldfarb is a veteran Washington, D.C., attorney, author and literary agent who worked in the Department of Justice as a special assistant to Robert F. Kennedy in the organized crime and racketeering section, and as a speechwriter for Kennedy’s Senate campaign in New York. He has written 11 books and 300 articles in addition to numerous op-eds and reviews (see www.RonaldGoldfarb.com).
In 1963, few believed that all the facts of the Kennedy assassination were fully disclosed, but the public seemed to accept that the Warren Commission told all that it could. Maybe it was a more naive time, but people seemed to accept tht the government might hold a secret that really was for the good of the people. After Viet-Nam, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Watergate and the near-impeachment of Nixon, the general US public finally stopped believing in the benevolence of government. Whatever the secrets were, whomever was involved, and whatever reason they were kept secret, it's been fifty years. Time to tell it all and let the chips fall where they may.
The American public who consistently believe that they can trust their government and the government propaganda continues to be shocked at what is unearthed over time. This will also be true with the bombings at the World Trade Center. People need to understand and wake up to the fact that our government is no different from any other government when it comes to keeping secrets.
I am dense, but what was the reason that the mafia wanted JFK dead?
It makes sense that authorities would cover up the Mob angle. After all, where's the gain in waking up with a dead horse in your bed or discovering that gangsters are visiting your kids at school?
I must disagree that the American government is worse at keeping secrets than any other government. History, even sanitized history, plainly demonstrates that any powerful institution keeps secrets. In the twentieth century alone, the communist governments of China and Russia, and the Nazis of Germany kept terrible secrets from their own people. In North Korea, the government holds enormous portions of both Korean and world history secret.
All one has to do is look at reporters who outed spies or military operations and cost people their lives to understand that some secrets need to be kept. The problem with an insitution holding secrets is that insitutions have no memories or judgement, just a powerful instinct to survive. Honor and integrity come from its people, not from its organizational structure or mission.
As for 9/11: we may indeed find out someday more about that terrible event, but it won't be that the US government had any hand at all in the planning, financing or execution of it. It may very well be that misapporpriated American funds or misguided individual Americans did have some peripheral connection with it, but the US government did not perpetuate this tragedy on its own people.
I think the reason people keep looking for the government to have had a hand in it is simple. We do not viscerally understand human evil. We can intellectualize it, we can rationalize it, we can even in some cases justify it, but we do not understand it. What hapened on 9/11 is evil. Period. And evil never makes sense. Sometimes there is a twisted logic to it, but it never makes sense.
I think most people in my generation and my children's generation (I am 40 with teenagers) take for granted that Oswald wasn't the lone gunmen. I also think the majority of Americans don't trust their government, either. I grew up in the era of Nixon, the Kennedy assasination, the Clinton sex scandal, and a host of other tawdry or suspicious incidents. I don't agree with the comment above that Americans would be "shocked" to see what is unearthed over time. On the contrary, nothing surprises me about our government or our politicians. Nothing. I'm conditioned to believe there is very little truth in our political discourse. We alll know this, but no one cares. We've turned into a nation of "Sheeple."
finderj writes:
"As for 9/11: we may indeed find out someday more about that terrible event, but it won't be that the US government had any hand at all in the planning, financing or execution of it."
And you know this because...?????
There is a large and growing list of news people, government officials, current and former ranking military personnel, fighter pilots, foreign heads of state, family members of 9-11 victims, NYC fire and police staff, celebrities, tenured professors, architects, steel high rise engineers, demolition experts and just plain old US citizens like myself who believe otherwise.
So I ask again.....you know this because?
Utterly moronic. The mafia's entire MO was to steal as much as they could for as long as they could without getting thrown in jail or killed. These old guys -- including the notoriously non-violent Marcello -- wouldn't kill a cop let alone the POTUS -- whose brother, no less, was the sitting attorney general! What, RFK was going to throw up his arms and go "Okay, you got me..." and that would be that? The Boys knew the jig was up in Cuba and did what they always do: Move onto the next scam. In fact, when they got the contract to kill Castro from the CIA, they took the government's money and didn't do squat. Thieves to the end whose talents are consistently overestimated by the popular culture.
The only proof of a conspiracy is the LACK of evidence, which proves the plotters must have been very clever indeed. These theories expand according to the need to sell books and get on cable TV shows.
PS Where did all of these super-stealthy plotters meet, Wrigley Field? So glad all of these conspirators played so nice together.
This would explain why not only was JFK killed, but also Oswald himself as well as RFK a few years later. As it is, we are supposed to believe that this was just all an odd coincidence.
John H. Davis (Jackie "O's" cousin) published "Mafia Kingfish" in 1989 exposing the same facts and more. In the name of good the FBI misled all Americans including children of the Kennedys. What are they doing today to keep American voters uninformed so that they elect criminals? Robert and Jack Kennedy were sons of a bootlegger who used mob connections to get JFK elected. Robert Kennedy's "massive war against the Mafia" excluded crime families that supported JFK. It was an abuse of power and betrayal that got the Kennedys killed. The families that supported JFK's political operations killed those involved in the murder of JFK. The FBI ignored reports of plans to kill JFK saying the informants were mentally ill. So much for respect for persons with disabilities by the FBI. Ahem!
If you want reasonable proof that people didn't believe the Warren Report even at the time, you have no further than Woody Allen's early standup comedy, in which he joked as early as 1964 that he was working on a book that was "a non-fiction version of the Warren Report."
He reused that joke many times and with other twists, in "Annie Hall" and other places.
If you want to find many references, both text and sound, just google "woody allen non-fiction version of the warren report"
In answer to rockwoman4's question: The leaders of the mafia in the U.S. in 1963 wanted Kennedy dead because they were envious, megalomaniacal murderers who hated him because they believed 1) he owed them, 2) he had betrayed them, 3) they could get away with it and 4) they would gain from it if they did. For example, Sam Giancana in Chicago liked people to be encouraged to think that he stole the 1960 election for Kennedy and before that helped his father get rich. Santos Traficante in Miami felt he was due for cooperating with the Kennedy-CIA follow-up on Eisenhower-Nixon administrations plans to invade Cuba and kill Castro who had shut down mob gambling casinos there. But what did they get? The Kennedy justice department doubles the number of prosecutions of organized crime and turns up the heat on corrupt Teamster Jimmy Hoffa. It humiliates New Orleans crime boss (and illegal alien) Carlos Marcello by essentially kidnapping him and dumping him in a jungle in Guatemala. The president "pulls the chicken switch" at the Bay of Pigs and, after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, shuts down the air strips and boat docks in Florida and Louisiana from which mobsters, Cuban exiles and other renegade operatives still planned to retake the island. Plus he lets Frank Sinatra set him up with Giancana's girlfriend. For all of these reasons, when Kennedy was murdered, I bet the real culprits felt they should entitled to immunity from prosecution, and that they were relieved to get it when a bright but very confused Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a part of their circle but had no idea what he was in for, was set up to take the fall instead. Meanwhile, prosecutions of the mafia dropped like the proverbial stone Marcello hated in his shoe. Sure they never got Cuba back, but their revenge on Kennedy, profits from an exploding drug trade, and the reassertion of their influence over our politics for a long time to come probably went a long way to make up for it.
Thank you.
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