Authors: Lamar Waldron
1971 book by Harold Weisberg, which discussed the tapes of Milteer
from November 1963. Judge Seymour Gelber later said that between
1971 and 1976, the Dade County state attorney’s files on the Milteer
case disappeared from a North Miami warehouse, even though they
“consisted of thousands of pages of transcripts and documents.”33
Heroin trafficking remained a hot topic in the news in 1974, and Sam
Giancana’s involvement in a narcotics ring eventually became too much
for Mexican authorities. Giancana was suddenly and unceremoniously
deported from Mexico on July 18, 1974, and returned to Chicago, where
a grand jury was waiting for him.34
In Washington, pressure for impeachment kept building during the
spring and summer of 1974. Former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford
had become vice president after Spiro Agnew had to resign for pay-
offs unrelated to Watergate. General Alexander Haig was by that time
Nixon’s chief of staff, and both Haig and Ford played crucial roles in the
events that resulted in Richard Nixon finally announcing his resignation
730
LEGACY OF SECRECY
to a nationwide television audience on August 8, 1974. Gerald Ford was
sworn in as president the following day, picking moderate Republican
Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. On September 8, 1974, many
Republican officials breathed a sigh of relief when Ford issued a full
pardon to Nixon, which was “unconditional for all crimes Nixon may
have committed in the White House.” Ford tried to quietly issue the
pardon on a Sunday morning, but it was still controversial, because
numerous prosecutions were still ongoing. The pardon removed the
leverage prosecutors needed to get Nixon to testify in those cases, or
about other officials who could only be indicted and prosecuted with
Nixon’s testimony. Ford’s act helped to ensure that many of Watergate’s
mysteries would remain just that until after Nixon’s death.35
E. Howard Hunt and his codefendants were not so lucky, and were
among those who went to prison for their roles in Nixon’s operations,
Hunt for thirty-three months. More than two dozen Nixon aides and
officials had been prosecuted, from Haldeman and Ehrlichman to those
far less well-known.
The prosecution of one little-remembered official from the Watergate
era would eventually lead to charges being brought against Santo Traf-
ficante and Carlos Marcello, netting Marcello a conviction that would
finally fulfill Bobby Kennedy’s goal of sending the godfather away for
a long prison term. In 1972, Nixon had appointed Richard Kleindienst
as attorney general, to replace John Mitchell. Kleindienst would later be
convicted for lying to a Senate committee. After Kleindienst’s resigna-
tion, he became involved in what Dan Moldea described as “a multimil-
lion-dollar insurance swindle involving the Teamsters.” Moldea says
that Kleindienst was “convicted with” an “insurance swindler” named
Joe Hauser. Also involved in the scheme was Santo Trafficante, who was
indicted, though he wouldn’t go to prison. More importantly, to avoid
prison Joe Hauser agreed to help the FBI. Hauser eventually became the
first wired informant to get close to Carlos Marcello, as part of an FBI
sting called Operation BRILAB (for “bribery and labor”).36
Chapter Sixty-four
By fall 1974, the intense press and Congressional interest in Watergate
began to fade—but less than six months after Nixon’s resignation, new
revelations in an article by Sy Hersh triggered a fresh round of inqui-
ries. The hearings increasingly centered on JFK’s assassination, and
one investigation would spawn another until the end of the decade. At
times the hearings came so close to exposing the truth that Santo Traf-
ficante, Carlos Marcello, and their associates felt they had no choice but
to have Congressional witnesses killed, sometimes on the eve of their
testimony.
With Sy Hersh’s December 22, 1974, article in the
New York Times
,
the mainstream media finally began to expose what its headlines called
the “Huge CIA [Domestic Surveillance] Operation” directed against
antiwar critics in the US. CIA Director William Colby fired Counter-
Intelligence Chief James Angleton the next day, but the firestorm had
begun. To quell the furor, President Ford appointed a blue ribbon com-
mission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to look into
the CIA’s domestic activities. However, since most of the Rockefeller
Commission’s members were conservative establishment figures like
Ronald Reagan, and its Executive Director was former Warren Com-
mission counsel David Belin, charges of “whitewash” were inevitable.
Though primarily devoted to domestic intelligence abuses, the commis-
sion soon started looking into JFK’s assassination, to debunk reports
that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Fiorini were two of the “three tramps”
photographed in Dealey Plaza.1
After Watergate, Congress and the press were far quicker to investi-
gate official wrongdoing, and the Rockefeller Commission soon found
itself competing for headlines, witnesses, and documents with Congres-
sional committees. Congress was already preparing to investigate the
scandal uncovered by Hersh when President Ford met with a group of
editors from the
New York Times
on January 16, 1975. Ford told them the
Rockefeller Commission had to be careful not to expose certain past
732
LEGACY OF SECRECY
CIA operations, “like assassinations.” Ford quickly tried to qualify his
remark, saying it was off the record, but word raced through journal-
istic circles, reaching Congress and adding CIA assassinations to their
agenda.2
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was created on January
27 and chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee
soon authorized a subcommittee devoted to the JFK assassination, headed
by moderate Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Schweiker
and including Colorado Senator Gary Hart. On February 19, 1975, the
House created the Nedzi Committee. Soon to be called the Pike Com-
mittee, it too would delve into CIA assassinations, at times touching on
the JFK assassination without realizing it.
The general public finally heard about President Ford’s “assassina-
tions” comment on February 28, 1975, during Daniel Schorr’s CBS news
broadcast. Schorr had also obtained from CIA Director William Colby
an indirect confirmation of CIA assassination attempts against foreign
leaders.3 Even more attention focused on JFK’s assassination after March
6, 1975, when Geraldo Rivera showed American TV audiences the com-
plete Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination for the first time, on his late-
night ABC show,
Goodnight America
. Though of much poorer quality
than today’s digitally enhanced version, the film stunned audiences
with their first glimpse of JFK being thrown back and to the left after
being shot—indicating a shot from the front. (For the next decade, show-
ings of the Zapruder film on TV would remain relatively rare.)4
Jack Anderson weighed in with new articles about the CIA-Mafia
plots on March 10 and 13, having already named Johnny Rosselli as one
of those involved. Four days later,
Time
magazine advanced the story by
adding Sam Giancana to the plots with Rosselli and the CIA. To help deal
with the increasing barrage of headlines about CIA assassinations and
other misdeeds, in March 1975 David Atlee Phillips made arrangements
to retire from the CIA. Since the press revelations could also uncover his
own unsavory activities, Phillips immediately founded the Association
of Retired Intelligence Officers, designed to counter the negative public-
ity the Agency was receiving.5
Richard Helms was called back from his ambassadorial post in Iran—
where the Shah’s regime had become even more brutal and repressive—
to begin a series of increasingly intense rounds of testimony to the
investigating committees. The Church Committee interviewed Helms
on April 23, followed by the Rockefeller Commission staff on April 27,
and culminating with a four-hour private session with the Rockefeller
Commissioners on April 28, 1975. Upon leaving, Helms saw CBS news-
man Daniel Schorr. Fearing that the secret cover-ups he had maintained
since 1962 were about to unravel, Helms exploded in fury at the man
he blamed for making them public—Daniel Schorr. As described by
Schorr:
Helms[’s] face, ashen from strain and fatigue, turned livid. “You son-
of-a-bitch!” he raged. “You killer! You cocksucker! ‘Killer Schorr’—
that’s what they ought to call you!” Continuing his string of curses,
he strode toward the press room.6
Helms was furious that his long-hidden secrets were being exposed,
and his use of the term “killer” could indicate his worry that the revela-
tions of Schorr and the committees might result in the death of a CIA
asset. Since most of the publicity focused on the decade-old plots to
assassinate Fidel Castro, and most of the non-Mafia CIA assets from
those operations were either out of harm’s way or already in Cuban
prisons (like Cubela and Menoyo), Helms may have been worrying (or
rationalizing) that a valuable asset like Almeida could be exposed and
killed.
Declassified files now make it clear that Helms lied to both com-
mittees about his unauthorized Castro assassination plots (admitting
only a limited amount of information) and completely hiding the JFK-
Almeida coup plan and most of AMWORLD (including its code name
and immense size). However, he wasn’t the only one—in contrast to Wil-
liam Colby’s carefully cultivated public image as being almost too forth-
coming with Congress, according to the Church staff, “when it came to
the assassination plots . . . Colby closed the door” and wouldn’t cooper-
ate. Beginning a pattern to obstruct Congress that would be repeated
by the CIA with a later committee, Colby appointed Seymour Bolten—
Desmond FitzGerald’s former assistant during the JFK-Almeida coup
plan and the CIA-Mafia plots—to be the CIA’s liaison to the Church
Committee.7 Thus, the person ostensibly helping the Committee
was someone who should have been interrogated and investigated
himself.
Even as the Rockefeller Commission issued its final report on June
11, 1975, the Church Committee intensified its efforts. On June 13, the
Church Committee again grilled Helms, this time exclusively about CIA
assassination plots, including those with the Mafia. His testimony was
in closed session, so the public had no way to know what he said—or
didn’t say.
Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello must have worried about what
734
LEGACY OF SECRECY
might come out concerning the CIA’s assassination plots, since it could
expose their roles in JFK’s murder. In the short term, Trafficante had the
most to lose, since he’d played a much bigger role in the CIA-Mafia plots.
Trafficante would have been especially worried when Sam Giancana
was subpoenaed and slated to testify on June 26.
On July 19, 1975, Sam Giancana became the first of several Congres-
sional witnesses to be murdered. The former mob boss was cooking a
late-night meal for a trusted friend who was visiting Giancana’s home
in the Chicago neighborhood of Oak Park. His friend shot Giancana
seven times with a silenced .22-caliber pistol, an unusually small gun
for a mob hit. Five of the shots were around Giancana’s chin and mouth,
a sign that Mafiosi shouldn’t talk.8
The gun was eventually traced to Florida, and some pointed the finger
at Trafficante. One government informant, Charles Crimaldi, said that
Giancana was killed by someone who worked for the CIA, though the
hit man was acting on his own and not at the request of officials. Since
several CIA assets and officials also worked with the Mafia, it could have
been someone with ties to both the mob and intelligence.9
Giancana’s murder made headlines across the country, adding
urgency to the committees’ investigations. The day after Giancana’s
death, CIA Director William Colby testified about CIA assassination
plots, followed four days later by Johnny Rosselli. The transcripts—kept
secret until the 1990s—show that Johnny Rosselli had mastered the art
of saying a lot while revealing little, sticking to an incomplete version of
the CIA-Mafia plots that mirrored the whitewashed version Helms had
promulgated in his own testimony and in the 1967 Inspector General’s
Report. Jack Anderson wrote once more about Rosselli on July 7, and
Time
magazine ran an article touching on the original 1959 CIA Mafia
plots that Hoffa had brokered—a story Hoffa himself had just leaked to
someone with the Church Committee.10 On July 17 and 18, the Church
Committee once more interrogated Helms about assassination plots, in
closed sessions.
Jimmy Hoffa was now in the crosshairs of the Committee, because