Authors: Lamar Waldron
employed his own powerful Washington lobbyist and had a close rela-
tionship with the Mafia boss of the nation’s capital, Joe Nesline. Look-
ing ahead, Marcello knew that any of the presidential options in 1964
were preferable to another four years of JFK. In November 1963, LBJ’s
political stock was so low that no one would have predicted that he
would win the 1964 election by a landslide. Newspapers and TV indi-
cated Richard Nixon or Arizona senator Barry Goldwater as the likely
Republican nominees for the 1964 race, and neither represented a threat
to Marcello. Nixon had the Marcello and Mafia support noted earlier and
though Goldwater had served with JFK on the Senate crime committee,
the Arizona senator had shown no real interest in going after the Mafia
that had killed two of his best friends, in 1955 and 1958. In short, JFK’s
murder would be good for Marcello both now and for years to come.
In New Orleans, Marcello had the police and the local FBI in his
pocket, minimizing his risk if the investigation of JFK’s murder ever
focused in that direction. The crime lord also had ties to lawmen in
Dallas, like Sheriff Bill Decker, who was riding in the lead car of JFK’s
motorcade along with Dallas Police Chief Bill Curry. On an undercover
police tape, Decker’s predecessor described him as “a payoff man” for
a Dallas gambling kingpin. Decker freely admitted to having a long
friendship with Joe Campisi, a Marcello lieutenant in Dallas and one of
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Ruby’s good friends.2 When Marcello’s Dallas Mafia boss, Joseph Civ-
ello, wanted to be paroled for a narcotics conviction, Decker provided a
character reference for the mobster.3 Sheriff Decker’s mob ties were not
that unusual for law enforcement officials in some major American cit-
ies at the time, and while Decker had no knowing involvement in JFK’s
assassination, the connection was there in case Marcello needed it.
Marcello had many ways to feed disinformation even to federal
authorities, and to essentially force agencies to protect his associates
and even himself. As documented throughout this book, most of the
dozen or so people knowingly involved in assassinating JFK were gov-
ernment assets, informants, or agents who were all capable of supplying
false or misleading information into the system, before, during, or after
JFK’s murder. We’ve noted the number of Marcello associates who had
infiltrated the JFK-Almeida coup plan, and Marcello’s own claim that he
was part of the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. Files at the
National Archives from the JFK Assassination Records Review Board
contain the allegation that an AMWORLD case officer was the liaison
between the CIA and Marcello. Therefore, even if some lead should
point to Marcello or his men, certain US intelligence officials would
have to hide that information in order to divert suspicion from them-
selves and their agency. They would have to either keep their suspicions
to themselves or accept assurances from their men that any seeming
involvement in JFK’s death was simply a matter of their having been
part of the same operation as Oswald, who was either a bad apple or
working for some foreign power.
Marcello and his partners in the assassination had so many connec-
tions to US intelligence and law enforcement that they are often over-
looked by historians and journalists. For example, one way information
could have gone directly to (or from) Desmond FitzGerald and Richard
Helms was through E. Howard Hunt. The following is just a partial list
of Hunt’s anti-Castro associates who worked with the Mafia:
• Hunt’s best friend, Manuel Artime, who was working on the CIA-
Mafia plots and was later found to be involved in drug trafficking
• Artime’s assistant, Rafael “Chi Chi” Quintero, who was involved
in drug running by the time of Iran-Contra, and likely much
earlier
• David Morales, the Miami CIA Operations Chief who headed the
CIA-Mafia plots at that time and was close to Johnny Rosselli
• Frank Fiorini, the Trafficante bagman who was a major source of
information for Hunt’s assistant, Bernard Barker
• Exile leader Tony Varona, who worked with Trafficante and
Rosselli on the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots, and who had
accepted a $200,000 bribe from Rosselli’s mob associates just three
months earlier
• Carlos Prio, the corrupt former Cuban president who was linked
to drugs and angry at being excluded from the coup plan by the
Kennedys
At a deniable arm’s length, the list even includes Hunt’s much
admired patron, Richard Helms, who at that time was the highest CIA
official to know about the continued use of the Mafia and European
criminals like QJWIN. We noted earlier Helms’s comment about David
Ferrie’s work for the CIA, which appears to have been corroborated by
the later statements of New Orleans CIA Deputy Chief Hunter Leake.
Marcello would have known that CIA officials had their own inter-
ests to protect if Ferrie’s name ever threatened to surface after JFK’s
assassination.
In New Orleans on November 22, Marcello had David Ferrie sitting
with him in the courtroom, as the closing arguments wound to a close.4
Ferrie’s presence gave him the perfect alibi for the time of JFK’s murder.
Marcello had spent much time with Ferrie in recent weeks, including
two full weekends at the huge Churchill Farms property. From all indi-
cations, Marcello viewed Ferrie as a brilliant man, and in some ways he
was. Based on papers later found by police, Ferrie had even calculated
the distance shells ejected from a rifle would travel, as if he wanted
to make sure that the shells police found after a shooting would be in
the proper place. While Marcello may have thought the highly intel-
ligent Ferrie had planned his actions carefully enough, the crime boss
didn’t realize there was one very small thing Ferrie had apparently
overlooked.
In Dallas on November 22, Jack Ruby was both tired and wired from his
busy previous day and late night. At noon, Ruby had been at the
Dallas
Morning News
building, four blocks from Dealey Plaza. However, as
JFK’s motorcade neared the area, Ruby disappeared, apparently leaving
the building for almost half an hour, according to an FBI report.5 Ruby’s
exact location and activities at the time of JFK’s assassination can’t be
established, aside from a comment by a Dallas TV reporter that he saw
Ruby near the Texas School Book Depository within moments of the
assassination.6 However, Ruby’s actions leading up to November 22
provide insight into what he was probably up to.
Ruby had recently been talking about leaving his modest Oak Cliff
neighborhood (the same area in which Oswald lived) and moving to
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a new apartment in the most expensive and exclusive part of Dallas,
Turtle Creek. Three days earlier, Ruby had talked to his tax attorney,
claiming “he had a connection who would supply him money to settle
his long-standing [IRS bill]” of more than $40,000.7 Ruby had been in
Chicago just days before JFK canceled his motorcade there, where he
had received $7,000 in cash from a Hoffa associate in the coffee shop of
the Bismarck Hotel.8 But that amount wouldn’t come close to paying his
IRS bill, let alone his expensive new rent. Clearly, on November 22, 1963,
Ruby was expecting a huge sum of money, since his checking account
contained only $246.65.
Ruby’s clubs, the seedy Carousel strip club and the lesser-known
Vegas Club, which he owned with his sister, weren’t doing especially
well, in spite of the shady side ventures Ruby ran, which included
gambling and prostitution. Ruby’s gunrunning was a fraction of what
it had been around the time of the Cuban Revolution, especially now
that the Kennedys had directed the CIA to cut off support for all but
a small handful of exile groups. Ruby’s mechanic, Donnell D. Whit-
ter, was also involved in gunrunning, and had been arrested by Dallas
police on November 18, 1963, as part of the gun ring that generated the
FBI and Treasury Department reports about the upcoming US invasion
of Cuba.
Ruby was part of Marcello’s and Trafficante’s portion of the French
Connection heroin network. An FBI document notes that since 1956,
“Jack Ruby of Dallas [had been given] the okay to operate [for a] large
narcotics setup operation between Mexico, Texas, and the East.” Jour-
nalist Michael Valentine has documented Ruby’s ties to the heroin net-
work, using Federal Bureau of Narcotics reports and interviews with
retired agents. They confirm that Civello, who ran Dallas for Marcello,
controlled the heroin business in that city. Valentine also cites the Ken-
nedy crime hearings in January 1958, in which a Bureau of Narcotics
supervisor linked “the Civello family in Dallas and . . . Carlos Marcello
in New Orleans [and] Santo Trafficante in Tampa” to the drug rackets.
Several Ruby associates and Dallas heroin traffickers also had links to
Michel Victor Mertz. As with Ruby’s strip club, gambling, and prosti-
tution rackets, the Dallas nightclub owner gained protection from law
enforcement for his narcotics activities by being helpful to them, and
sometimes acting as an informant. 9
However, Ruby was a relatively low-level, and thus low-paid, part
of the heroin network, so his huge financial windfall would have to
come from other activities. As we discussed earlier, Congressional
investigators found that Ruby’s long-distance calls had skyrocketed
as November 22 approached, an indication that something big was in
the works, something that required the careful use of cover stories and
intermediaries.
JFK had been in Houston the previous day for a motorcade, and
former FBI agent William Turner found and summarized a Secret Ser-
vice report that stated: “Numerous witnesses identify . . . Jack Ruby as
being in Houston, Texas, on November 21, for several hours, one block
from the President’s entrance route and from the Rice Hotel where he
stayed.”10 Ruby was apparently shadowing JFK, getting a firsthand look
at his security precautions.
Ruby’s extensive police connections in Dallas were useful to Marcello.
One of Ruby’s musicians later told the FBI that he had seen “between
150 to 200 [Dallas] police officers at the Carousel [Club] at one time
or another,” and another Ruby associate put the number even higher,
saying Ruby “was well acquainted with virtually every member of the
Dallas Police.”11 Officers didn’t have to pay for drinks at Ruby’s clubs,
and were sometimes provided with women. FBI reports note that Ruby
was “very good friends” with Captain Will Fritz, who ran Homicide for
the Dallas police, and that Ruby “was allowed the complete run of the
Homicide Bureau.” Ruby had even vacationed with the Dallas “Chief
of Police” a few years earlier, according to another FBI report.12
Ruby could be helpful to Marcello by finding out things like the fact
that 365 Dallas policemen were slated to be at Love Field when JFK
arrived, and 60 would be at the Trade Mart as security at JFK’s Dallas
speech, but only a scattered few would be at Dealey Plaza.13 Ruby would
also have known that Dallas Officer J. D. Tippit, who worked after hours
for Ruby’s best friend, had been having an affair and had gotten his
girlfriend pregnant.14 Tippit needed money to deal with the crisis, and
his situation allowed Ruby or his associates to exert pressure on him. If
Tippit were told to be in a certain place to make an important arrest, for
which he would be well paid, he wouldn’t be in a position to refuse or
ask too many questions.
Journalist Seth Kantor documented that later on November 22, 1963,
Ruby had $7,000 on him, as well as his loaded pistol, so he might have
had both when JFK went through Dealey Plaza. That’s plenty of money
for payoffs, a gun for any trouble, and even a built-in alibi if Ruby needed
to shoot someone near the Depository or in his neighborhood (he could
claim he thought he was being robbed). But all indications are that Ruby
preferred to simply arrange for a Dallas policeman to take care of anyone
who needed to be silenced.
As we’ve noted, about two months earlier Ruby had met with Johnny
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Rosselli in Miami twice, though FBI reports about the meeting van-
ished during a Congressional investigation. In fact, FBI surveillance
reports for Rosselli in Miami are completely missing for the months
surrounding those visits. Around the same time that Ruby met with Ros-
selli, author Peter Dale Scott notes that David Atlee Phillips was at the
Miami CIA station, no doubt meeting with his associate David Morales,
who was very close to Rosselli. Phillips even had a good friend in com-
mon with Ruby: Gordon McClendon, a Dallas radio station owner who