Authors: Lamar Waldron
multi-faceted cover-up that followed JFK’s murder, which lasted decades
longer than anyone could have envisioned in 1963. The cover-up wasn’t
intended to shield JFK’s killers, but to protect Commander Almeida and
prevent a nuclear confrontation. However, high officials ranging from
J. Edgar Hoover to the CIA’s Richard Helms also used the opportunity
to cover up their own misjudgments and misdeeds. Helms needed to
hide his unauthorized Castro assassination plots with the Mafia, which
he had withheld from both his own CIA Director and from Attorney
General Robert Kennedy (tasked by JFK with overseeing covert anti-
Castro operations).
Robert Kennedy had additional reasons for covering up as well,
from protecting his brother’s reputation to preserving his own political
future. Shortly before JFK’s murder, Robert Kennedy testified to Con-
gress that it was almost impossible to prosecute top Mafia godfathers
for any crimes, let alone ordering a hit.5 Robert asked trusted associates
to secretly investigate JFK’s slaying, and he eventually concluded that
Marcello was responsible. Prior to his own assassination, Robert con-
fided to associates that only by becoming President could he conduct
the truly thorough investigation needed to bring his brother’s killers
to justice.6
Robert’s own murder ended any chance of that, and
Legacy
focuses
on long-overlooked information about the criminal ties of compulsive
racetrack gambler Sirhan Sirhan and some of his family. It analyzes
the confessions of two associates of Johnny Rosselli regarding Robert
Kennedy’s murder, raising new questions about the official account.
It’s important to point out that
Legacy
does not say that the same
conspiracy that killed JFK also killed Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy. Out of the dozen people knowingly involved in President
Kennedy’s assassination,
Legacy
documents that three of those who con-
fessed or were caught on tape talking about JFK’s murder were later
involved to varying degrees in Dr. King’s slaying. Because so much was
covered up about JFK’s murder, those three men—all career criminals—
were able to get away with killing Dr. King. A like number may have
been involved in Robert’s assassination.
All three assassinations triggered cover-ups by US officials who had
nothing to do with the assassinations themselves. Those efforts in turn
caused still later cover-ups to protect the reputations of agencies and
former superiors. Officials like Richard Helms, who initially covered up
information about JFK’s assassination to protect national security and
his own career, essentially wound up protecting the criminal behavior of
others in order to avoid exposing his earlier cover-ups and unauthorized
operations. The career criminals behind the murders of JFK and Dr. King
spent decades literally getting away with murder, and they knew from
experience how to box in authorities by compromising law enforcement
and intelligence operations.
Legacy of Secrecy
was written because we discovered a tremendous
amount of new and significant information in the National Archives,
and from our sources, after the publication of
Ultimate Sacrifice
. While
Ultimate
covers the period from Oswald’s death on November 24, 1963,
to 2006 in only one chapter, the majority of
Legacy
focuses on the after-
math of JFK’s murder. The deaths of several individuals involved in
those events since the publication of
Ultimate Sacrifice
also allowed us
to disclose more in
Legacy of Secrecy
. The most extensive example is E.
Howard Hunt, whose work on the JFK-Almeida coup plan—while he
was the CIA’s liaison with US publishers and the press—is fully detailed
here for the first time. In a posthumously released autobiography and
tape recordings made for one of his sons, Hunt made seemingly con-
tradictory claims about JFK’s murder, sometimes saying they were only
speculation. However, Hunt’s self-serving accounts left out the most
important information—not just his work on the JFK-Almeida coup
plan, but also the ties of Hunt’s associates, including his best friend
Manuel Artime, to Santo Trafficante and the Mafia. As
Legacy
docu-
ments, seven associates of Hunt were among those who sold out the
JFK-Almeida coup plan to the Mafia. The book also shows how Hunt’s
role in the JFK-Almeida coup plan led to his infamous work for Nixon
during Watergate.7
Legacy of Secrecy
tells the full story in five parts, plus a photo-document
section that shows some of the most important files and people involved.
The following are just some of the highlights from each part:
Part I (Chapters 1-10) reveals critical new information about the JFK-
Almeida coup plan, an operation so secret that only a dozen US officials
knew about it. Even JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, told us he
wasn’t informed about it until after JFK’s murder. This part also iden-
tifies the twelve associates of Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli who
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
learned about the coup plan, showing how that knowledge was used
in the attempts to kill JFK in Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas. It describes
Marcello’s confession to ordering JFK’s murder, his being introduced
to Oswald by his pilot David Ferrie, and Marcello’s meetings with Jack
Ruby. Part I gives a new perspective on Oswald, pointing out his simi-
larities to the ex-Marine patsy for the Chicago attempt and to the Tampa
suspect linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Using witnesses
overlooked or ignored by the Warren Report, Part I depicts the murder
of JFK, followed by the killing of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippet.
Part II (Chapters 11-20) details the cover-ups that began within hours
of JFK’s murder. These include Robert Kennedy’s initial suspicions that
someone involved in the coup plan was tied to JFK’s murder, and how
two JFK aides’ eyewitness accounts of shots from the “grassy knoll”
impacted Robert’s control of JFK’s autopsy. It documents President
Lyndon B. Johnson’s efforts to avoid a nuclear showdown with the
Soviet Union, while associates of Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli were
spreading phony stories tying Oswald to Fidel Castro—even hinting to
the press about JFK’s top secret coup plan. Part II further shows how the
CIA’s Richard Helms and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover withheld key infor-
mation from investigators, President Johnson, and each other, as they
sought to hide their own intelligence failures. Finally, Part II explains
why Marcello had Ruby kill Oswald, how associates of Robert Kennedy
spawned the Warren Commission, and why Robert tried to get LBJ to
continue the coup plan with the still-unexposed Almeida.
Part III (Chapters 21-37, covering 1964 through mid-1967) shows why
Richard Helms shut down his unauthorized Castro assassination opera-
tions after he was promoted to CIA Director, and how Johnny Rosselli’s
threats to reveal those operations stalled legal action against the Mafia
don. It also shows how Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli compromised
the JFK investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison,
resulting in one suicide and one murder. Part III also describes Bobby’s
secret investigations of JFK’s murder and briefly lays the groundwork
for several of the men involved in the murder of Dr. King.
Part IV (Chapters 38-60, covering mid-1967 to mid-1969) extensively
details explosive new information about the assassination of Martin
Luther King, focusing on the previously unknown roles of Joseph
Milteer, Hugh R. Spake, Carlos Marcello, and Johnny Rosselli in dealing
with James Earl Ray. It reveals how Milteer and three Atlanta partners
raised money for Dr. King’s assassination, and—after several failed
attempts—paid Carlos Marcello a huge sum to broker the contract on
Dr. King. We show why Marcello agreed, and how James Earl Ray went
from being a new member of Marcello’s drug network to stalking Dr.
King. Part IV also shows why J. Edgar Hoover and high FBI officials had
to limit parts of their King inquiry, both to avoid compromising ongoing
prosecutions of Marcello and Rosselli and because of their earlier failings
in investigating the two mob bosses (and Milteer) for JFK’s murder.
In addition, Part IV raises new questions about Robert Kennedy’s
assassination, including Johnny Rosselli’s ties to Sirhan’s main attor-
ney and CIA officer David Morales. For the first time we expose David
Morales’s tie to an earlier plan to assassinate Fidel Castro by using a
pistol-wielding assassin in a pantry. Part IV also reveals the little-known
criminal ties of some of Sirhan’s associates and family, including the
attempted murder of Sirhan’s brother shortly after Robert Kennedy’s
assassination.
Part V (Chapters 61-65, covering 1970 to the present) focuses signifi-
cantly on Watergate, showing why a dozen participants in that scandal
had ties to operations like the JFK-Almeida coup plan (and the Mafia’s
infiltration of it), and how three of those helped to expose Watergate.
It quotes the document that the Watergate burglars were really after
and explains why Johnny Rosselli and JFK’s assassination became part
of the Watergate investigation, which triggered five more government
committees and commissions.
In Part V, we also document the murders of five witnesses slated for
Congressional inquiries into JFK’s assassination—including Rosselli,
Sam Giancana, and Jimmy Hoffa—and four additional sudden deaths
of witnesses. We show how the JFK-Almeida coup was withheld from
all of those committees, including the HSCA, and the role played by
a 1978 meeting between a US official and Commander Almeida. We
also explain how Watergate spawned the BRILAB FBI sting that finally
brought Marcello a long sentence in federal prison. There, the godfather
became the target of the FBI’s undercover CAMTEX sting, resulting in
Marcello’s JFK confession and his threat to kill the FBI informant who
heard it.
Part V concludes with an Epilogue showing Commander Almeida’s
increasingly high profile in Cuba after the revelation (outside of Cuba) of
his secret work for JFK. With Fidel having stepped aside, Almeida could
be a key player in ending the forty-seven-year-old impasse and trade
embargo between Cuba and the US. Ironically, several of JFK’s Cuban
exile allies from 1963 could still play important roles as well.
Legacy
depicts the sometimes painful transformation of Robert Kennedy
from aggressive Attorney General to a revered champion of civil rights
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
and advocate for the poor, as he struggled to deal with his brother’s
murder. However, this book is not a biography of Robert Kennedy, JFK,
or Martin Luther King, or a chronicle of the civil rights movement, even
for the years we cover in depth (late 1963 to 1969). Unlike
Ultimate Sacri-
fice, Legacy
does not extensively
document the development of the JFK-
Almeida coup plan and the backgrounds of its participants. The same
is true for the long Mafia careers of Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli
prior to JFK’s murder—including their work for the CIA in the Castro
assassination plots that started in 1959— all of which are the subject of
hundreds of pages in
Ultimate Sacrifice
.
For both the FBI and the CIA, where appropriate, we try to draw
distinctions between the actions of top leaders like J. Edgar Hoover and
Richard Helms and those of rank-and-file personnel, who were often at
the mercy of superiors with agendas (and information) they didn’t share
with most in their organizations. The HSCA investigated and cleared the
FBI of involvement in Martin Luther King’s assassination, but because
of the FBI’s well-documented shameful track record in dealing with Dr.
King, we tried to rely on government reports that were appropriately
critical of the FBI.
Legacy
is the result of twenty years of research—with help from some
of the best investigators of today and from the past—that led to the
continuing discovery of files at the National Archives that confirm (and
add detail to) what Kennedy aides and associates told us years earlier. In
1990, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk first confirmed “active” plans
for a “second invasion” of Cuba at the time of JFK’s death and explained
why JFK wasn’t bound by any pledge not to invade Cuba. JFK aide
Dave Powers told us in 1991 that he and another aide saw shots from
the grassy knoll, but were pressured to change their story for the Warren
Commission “for the good of the country.” In 1992, Robert Kennedy’s
top Cuban exile aide Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams first revealed
Almeida’s name and many details of the coup plan, while other for-
mer Kennedy aides pointed to Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli as