Authors: Lamar Waldron
own experience meeting contacts at movie theaters, setting up the
time by phone and using “recognition procedures” that included code
phrases. In Oswald’s pocket on November 22 was half of a torn box
top, as if Oswald expected to meet someone who had the other half at
the theater.28 Veciana told us about meeting the CIA official who first
recruited Phillips, who gave Veciana half of a torn dollar bill to use as a
recognition procedure later. Oswald had a couple of torn dollar bills in
his room, and the torn-bill technique was also used in the Texas arm of
the French Connection heroin ring.29
John Martino, Rosselli and Trafficante’s Cuban exile associate, said
shortly before his death that “Oswald had been ‘put together’ by ‘anti-
Castro types.’” Martino knew what he was talking about; as we noted
earlier, he was acquainted with David Morales and had met with Mar-
cello, Banister, Trafficante, and Rosselli in 1963. Martino told his son he
even saw Oswald passing out the pro-Castro leaflets when Oswald was
arrested, and he explained that “Oswald didn’t know who he was work-
ing for. . . . He was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in Dallas on
the day of the assassination. “They were to meet Oswald in the theater
and get him out of the country. . . . ”30 However, according to Martino,
Oswald didn’t know that if he made it out of the theater, the plan was to
“eliminate him.” If Oswald appeared to have fled, or be fleeing, to Cuba
after JFK’s murder, that would have made the pressure to invade Cuba
tremendous, especially since (as Martino and his Mafia associates knew
all too well) the United States had a Cuban invasion plan ready to go.
Echoing Martino’s words that “Oswald didn’t know who he was
working for,” Oswald’s wife would say, long after the assassination,
that her husband had been “caught between two powers—the govern-
ment and organized crime.” According to the
San Jose Mercury News,
Marina said that “in retrospect, Oswald seemed professionally schooled
in secretiveness, and I believe he worked for the American government.
He was taught the Russian language when he was in the military. Do you
think that is usual, that an ordinary soldier is taught Russian? Also, he
got in and out of Russia quite easily, and he got me out quite easily.”31
At his job at the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald sometimes
used the pay phone near the first-floor lunchroom. On November 22,
1963, a foreman “saw Oswald near the telephone on the first floor” at
ten or fifteen minutes before noon (just thirty minutes before JFK was
shot). It’s not known what calls he may have made or received that day.
At noon, Oswald was still on the first floor, eating lunch in the small
first-floor lunchroom used by minority and disabled employees. Unlike
many employees, who started to drift out of the building on their lunch
break to await the arrival of JFK’s motorcade, Oswald seemed to have
other things on his mind.32
Chapter Seven
As JFK and Jackie were beginning their motorcade through Dallas on
November 22, 1963, Bobby Kennedy was having lunch at his Hickory
Hill estate in Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters. The visiting US
Attorney from New York, Robert Morgenthau, and his assistant joined
Bobby by the pool. Morgenthau had handled the prosecutions result-
ing from the arrest of Joe Valachi, the Mafia heroin operative whose
sensational televised Congressional testimony two months earlier had
electrified the nation, dragging mob secrets out of the shadows and into
American living rooms.
That Friday was a balmy Indian-summer day at Bobby’s, with weather
much like that in Dallas, and Bobby took a break for a bracing midday
swim. Doing so gave him time to reflect on the morning meeting he’d
had with his Mafia prosecutors at the Justice Department. Bobby must
have felt pleased, since tremendous progress was being made on all
fronts. Their investigation of a French Connection heroin bust in Texas,
the second in two years, was going well. A year earlier, drug enforce-
ment officers in Marcello-controlled Houston had seized twenty-two
pounds of heroin linked to Trafficante. The most recent bust centered on
a carload of heroin at the Texas–Mexico border that involved a Cuban
exile and the Montreal Mafia.1 Bobby knew from experience that heroin
traffickers could be ruthless, so he had arranged for the main witness
and his family to be placed under US protection in the coming months.
In 1963, no Federal Witness Protection Program existed yet, and even
arrangements to shield star Mafia witness Joe Valachi had to be done
on an ad-hoc basis.
Bobby’s morning meeting had also covered his Mafia prosecutors’
pressure on Santo Trafficante and members of the Chicago Mafia, led by
Sam Giancana. Bobby was pleased with that week’s release of
The Green
Felt Jungle,
a book that finally exposed Johnny Rosselli’s leading role in
Las Vegas on behalf of the Chicago mob. Bobby was no doubt relieved
that JFK had ended his relationship with Rosselli’s girlfriend, Judith
Campbell, a year and a half earlier, and that Campbell’s recent attempt
to contact JFK again—just after the Chicago assassination attempt—had
been rebuffed.
Most important for Bobby, he was awaiting a verdict in Carlos Marcel-
lo’s federal trial in New Orleans. A conviction would be the culmination
of a battle Bobby and JFK had been waging against Marcello since 1958,
and would result in Marcello’s being either imprisoned or permanently
deported from the United States.
Though Bobby kept his Mafia prosecutors separate from his Get Hoffa
Squad, he knew they must have enjoyed the headline in the November
22
New York Times
that proclaimed “Las Vegas: Casinos Get Millions in
Loans from Teamsters Fund.”2 The article was just one in a recent series
featuring information that Bobby’s men had supplied, highlighting the
ties of the Teamster president to casinos and gangsters. Hoffa himself
was being tried for jury tampering in Nashville, and had reportedly
tried to bribe a juror in that trial. Hoffa didn’t realize that Bobby had
a Teamster informer in Louisiana, who had revealed Hoffa’s threats
in the summer of 1962 about having Bobby assassinated in a car. We
can only imagine what Bobby must have felt each time he made the
trip by car from his Virginia home to his Justice Department office in
Washington.
One of the most pressing concerns on Bobby’s mind during his
November 22 lunch and swim was something that he couldn’t share
with Morgenthau, his Mafia prosecutors, or his Get Hoffa Squad: the
impending coup plan against Fidel Castro, just ten days away. Earlier in
the week, Bobby had completed his final meetings with his trusted exile
leaders: DIA files confirm he had met with Harry Williams and Manuel
Artime on November 17, the day before JFK’s Tampa motorcade, and
that the following day Bobby had met with the leader of the Fort Ben-
ning Cuban American troops. On November 21, Bobby had met again
with Harry Williams, for the last time before the coup.3
While Bobby had been meeting with his Mafia prosecutors that Friday
morning, Harry was at an important meeting that Bobby had arranged,
with CIA officials like Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick and E.
Howard Hunt.4 If no problems arose at the afternoon portion of the
meeting, Harry would proceed immediately to Miami, to the US base
at Guantanamo the next day, and then slip into Castro’s Cuba to meet
with Almeida.5 At that point, it would be too late for any breakthrough
in the secret peace negotiations to prevent the coup. Harry’s entry into
Cuba around November 25 would also coincide with Bobby’s revelation
94
LEGACY OF SECRECY
to Dean Rusk and other cabinet officials that all the planning they had
been doing in recent months was about to bear fruit, since they had
found someone powerful enough in the Cuban government to “elimi-
nate” Fidel and stage a coup.6
While Bobby knew that Cuban exile leaders Manuel Artime and
Tony Varona were now fully on board, he also realized that two others,
Manolo Ray and Eloy Menoyo, had not yet completely committed to
Harry. However, CIA files confirm that Harry had met with both men in
recent weeks to discuss what was generally going to happen, and that
money was being provided to each of them (in Ray’s case, more than
$100,000). Bobby and Harry were confident that both Ray and Menoyo
would cooperate fully once the coup began.
Like Harry, Bobby was sure that Almeida was sincere and not a double
agent, because of his willingness to put his own family under covert
US protection in another country. Still, if anything happened and the
coup turned into a disaster, one of Bobby’s associates indicated that the
Attorney General planned to do the same thing he had offered to do after
the Bay of Pigs fiasco: take full responsibility and resign, to minimize
the political damage to JFK. Bobby wouldn’t be risking his life during
the coup, like Harry and Almeida would, but he knew his own political
life was on the line.
Fully aware of a higher level of official planning kept mostly secret
from Harry and the other Cuban exile leaders, Bobby knew about the
flurry of eight drafts of the “Plan for a Coup in Cuba” that had been
completed in just the past five months. (Only three, much smaller
drafts had been completed in the six months before Almeida’s May
1963 contact with Harry.) Bobby also knew—from trusted advisors like
General Maxwell Taylor, General Joseph Carroll, and Army Secretary
Cyrus Vance—about the updated invasion plans for Cuba, CINCLANT
OPLANS 312 and 316, that might well have to be used if the coup didn’t
go smoothly.
Bobby’s exile leaders also had not been made aware of the Cuba
Contingency Planning for possible retaliation from Fidel if the Cuban
dictator found out about the coup plan. One of Bobby’s secretive sub-
committees of the National Security Council was still trying to finalize
the plans, but the thinking behind them had no doubt affected how
Bobby had dealt with the recent assassination attempts against JFK in
Chicago and Tampa. So far, Bobby and JFK’s media skills and political
savvy had kept any mention of the plots out of the press, and away from
leaking officials and Congress. After Friday’s motorcades in Dallas and
Austin, JFK would not take part in any more dangerous motorcades
until after the coup had taken place. Bobby could take comfort in the
fact that no active plot had been reported in Dallas, as there had been in
Chicago and Tampa, and that, compared with those cities, Dallas had
only a small Cuban population.
At a safe house in Washington, D.C., Harry Williams was eating a soli-
tary lunch of sandwiches as his CIA meeting took a break. Whether
Harry ate alone because of the lingering racism of D.C. and some in the
CIA—an attitude that forced Hispanic CIA assets to stay only at certain
hotels (the Ebbitt, for Harry and his associates)—or simply because of
the busy schedules of the CIA participants isn’t known.7 The morning
meeting had gone well, and no serious problems had arisen. Several
CIA officials had slipped in and out of the meeting, including Lyman
Kirkpatrick, the CIA’s Executive Director and technically its third-
highest official. Kirkpatrick had written a harsh report criticizing the
CIA’s performance during the Bay of Pigs debacle, so it made sense to
have him carefully review all aspects of the plan before Harry slipped
into Cuba for the coup. None of the men at the meeting were identified
to Harry by their real names, but a top Kennedy aide later confirmed
Kirkpatrick’s presence for part of the meeting.
Kirkpatrick had left the meeting to appear with McCone and Helms
before the President’s Foreign Intelligence Review Board at the White
House. (General Carroll had met with the Board the previous day.) Other
important officials at Harry’s meeting at various times have been iden-
tified as Richard Helms and Desmond FitzGerald. Present for most, if
not all, of the meeting was E. Howard Hunt, one of the two CIA officers
assigned to assist Harry. According to former FBI agent William Turner,
the other CIA officer assisting Harry was James McCord. (McCord
declined to speak to the authors or
Vanity Fair
about whether he was at
the meeting.)8 To Turner, Harry characterized McCord as cordial, profes-
sional, and helpful. But Harry said that E. Howard Hunt clearly resented
being in an essentially subordinate role to a Cuban exile.
In Harry’s morning meeting with the CIA officials, they had reviewed
the plan to have Harry meet with Commander Almeida inside Cuba,
then remain in place to await the coup. After Fidel had been killed, and
his death blamed on someone else (not Almeida or Harry), then Artime,