Authors: Lamar Waldron
being behind JFK’s murder—something the mob bosses’ confessions
now confirm.8
All the secrecy that began in 1963 had tragic and lingering effects on
America and the world, because intelligence and investigative agencies
kept making the same mistakes. Several of those involved in the intel-
ligence operations surrounding JFK’s murder wound up being involved
in US missions in Laos, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, and Central America—all
with disastrous results. Because the reasons for the failure of JFK’s coup
plan were never exposed, later US coup attempts against dictators like
Saddam Hussein failed for many of same reasons JFK’s coup plan failed.
The US intelligence failures noted in the 9/11 Report, which preceded
that tragedy, are echoed in some cases almost word-for-word in docu-
ments depicting the intelligence failures prior to JFK’s assassination.
The current impasse between the US and Cuba—essentially
unchanged since the early days of JFK’s administration—illustrates how
the secrecy surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination and the JFK-
Almeida coup plan still affects America today. The economic stakes are
higher now than ever before, especially with Cuba’s vast oil reserves,
but US economic sanctions make normal trade impossible. The con-
tinuation of those sanctions for decades is due, in part, to the mistaken
belief of some former officials—like former Secretary of State Alexan-
der Haig—that Fidel Castro killed JFK, a belief whispered among some
US officials and Cuban exile leaders for decades. Those rumors persist
because more than a million CIA records related to JFK’s assassination
and the JFK-Almeida coup plan are still withheld today, despite the
1992 JFK Act, passed unanimously by Congress requiring their release.
Legacy of Secrecy
’s Epilogue lists just a few of the most important docu-
ment groups from 1963 that are still being withheld, and many more are
detailed in almost every chapter.9
Legacy of Secrecy
was written to reveal our hidden history, so that
America does not have to keep repeating its tragic past. We believe it’s
better to know the truth, however painful, than to rely on the sometimes
distorted or incomplete view of the history that has resulted from the
withholding or destruction of so much vital information.
Author’s note: Several key names have been simplified and standardized in
this book. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be referred to without “Jr.,” while
his father is identified with “Sr.” Tampa godfather Santo Trafficante Jr. will be
treated the same way, while his father will be referred to as Santos Trafficante
Sr. The names of several important Cuban exiles will be standardized to their
most common usage in government files and by associates: Manuel Artime,
Manolo Ray, Eloy Menoyo, Tony Varona, and Harry Williams.
Also, to minimize disruption while reading, we sometimes put an endnote
number at the end of a paragraph instead of putting it at the end of the particular
sentence it refers to.
PART ONE
Chapter One
The rifle fire in Dallas that killed John F. Kennedy changed America
forever, casting a long shadow on the history of the years that followed.
JFK’s murder didn’t just start a frantic effort to find his assassins—it
also triggered a series of covert actions to hide the fact that the United
States was on the brink of invading Cuba. The exposure of this top-
secret plan, part of a JFK-authorized coup to topple Fidel Castro, could
have led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets only a year after
the Cuban Missile Crisis. Revealing the coup, which was only ten days
away, would have also cost the life of JFK’s ally high in the Cuban gov-
ernment, Commander of the Army Juan Almeida, ending any chance
the US had of toppling Fidel from the inside. The cover-ups by key
US officials, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, and the CIA’s Richard Helms, kept the JFK-
Almeida coup plan secret from the public, not just at the time, but for
decades to come. However, it also had the tragic effect of preventing a
full investigation of JFK’s assassination, spawning a legacy of secrecy
that would lead to more deaths and impact presidents, Congress, and
US foreign policy for the next forty-five years.
Important files that have been declassified in recent years, coupled
with new disclosures from two dozen Kennedy associates, allow the
story to be detailed for the first time. They allow us to chronicle the
secret investigations into JFK’s death undertaken by Robert Kennedy
and others, which had to be conducted covertly to avoid exposing the
JFK-Almeida coup plan and other intelligence operations. CIA officials,
such as Richard Helms, had to protect not only legitimate covert opera-
tions, but also unauthorized schemes withheld from the Kennedys and
Helms’s own CIA Director, like the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro.
New revelations about John and Robert Kennedy, the CIA, the Mafia,
and Cuba cast the aftermath of JFK’s death in a whole new light. This
new information shows who was actively involved in JFK’s murder,
who was covering up to protect their reputation, who was protecting
4
LEGACY OF SECRECY
national security, and who was really trying to solve the assassination.
The information that Robert Kennedy and other officials decided to
reveal, or not to reveal, would generate much of the controversy sur-
rounding the JFK assassination that persists even today. The decisions
they made on November 22, 1963, are why “well over a million CIA
records” remain classified today, sixteen years after Congress unani-
mously passed a law requiring their release.1
To understand their actions, it’s important to look first at what the
key players had been doing in the weeks and months leading up to
JFK’s assassination. Much of the following is from the thousands of
pages of formerly secret government files that were not available to the
Warren Commission or the Congressional investigations of the 1970s,
’80s, and ’90s.
In 1963, the second most powerful man in America was the President’s
brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Bobby, as he liked to be
called by friends and associates, was far more than the nation’s top law
enforcement official. As the President’s closest confidant and protector,
Bobby advised JFK on most important official, political, and personal
issues. Not yet the almost saintly idealist some would say he became
before his own assassination, the Bobby of 1963 could be brash and
cocky, a tough adversary. Acutely aware of the way government, the
media, and big business really worked, he constantly tried—often with
success—to get what he and JFK wanted. Yet he also inspired fierce loy-
alty from those who worked for him, who saw in him a determination
to make America and the world a better place.
Bobby’s path to becoming Attorney General was part of JFK’s path
to the presidency. In 1958, Senator John F. Kennedy started laying the
groundwork for his presidential run by becoming the most publicized
member of a Senate committee investigating the Teamsters and orga-
nized crime. Bobby, the committee’s chief counsel, did much of the
actual grilling of Mafia bosses and their associates, such as Jimmy Hoffa.
Rumors about Mafia ties and Prohibition-era bootlegging had long
dogged their father, Joseph Kennedy, one of America’s wealthiest men,
and going after mob bosses so aggressively was one way for JFK and
Bobby to neutralize that issue. The crime hearings had become a mat-
ter of national urgency because the Mafia’s power had grown tremen-
dously during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower and
Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s early ties to the Mafia have been
extensively documented, most recently by author Anthony Summers.
His best-selling book about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover,
Official and
Confidential,
makes a persuasive case that Hoover’s soft treatment of the
Mafia (Hoover denied the very existence of the Mafia for years) resulted
from the Director’s efforts to hide his own closeted life.
While Senator John F. Kennedy and Bobby couldn’t prosecute Mafia
bosses in 1958 and 1959, they could at least expose their criminal orga-
nizations to public scrutiny. This was true even when a mob boss repeat-
edly refused to answer questions by using his Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination, as did Louisiana/Texas godfather Carlos
Marcello. In a public session on March 24, 1959, Bobby posed dozens
of incisive questions to Marcello, and when the crime boss declined
to answer, Bobby’s interrogation clearly outlined Marcello’s criminal
empire. This included Marcello’s extensive involvement in the heroin
trade, something he shared with his close associate Santo Trafficante,
the godfather of Tampa, who controlled much of Florida.
The Kennedys had less success in getting Trafficante to appear, since
he spent so much time visiting his Havana casinos. When Bobby Ken-
nedy had the director of the Miami Crime Commission testify about
Trafficante, Bobby noted in the hearing that there had been a mob hit
in Tampa the previous day. Trafficante finally fled to Cuba in 1959, to
avoid testifying about his role in the notorious barbershop murder of
New York mob boss Albert Anastasia.
Much to Bobby’s frustration, still another Mafia boss was able to
evade testifying in 1959 because of his secret work for the CIA against
new Cuban leader Fidel Castro.2 Unknown to Bobby Kennedy, this plot
to assassinate Castro had been brokered for the CIA by Jimmy Hoffa,
who used his arms sales to Castro and Mafia ties to his own advantage,
as later documented by Congressional investigators. This 1959 plot
wasn’t successful, and the following year the CIA took a fresh approach
by avoiding Hoffa and working directly with a new set of mob bosses,
including Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli (and eventually, Marcello).
However, involved in both Hoffa’s Cuban arms sales and the original
1959 Castro assassination plot was a small-time Dallas gangster and
gunrunner named Jack Ruby.3
During the 1959 Senate crime hearings, Bobby was never able to find
a man using the alias of “Jack La Rue,” who was on the fringe of the
first CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots while smuggling armaments
to Cuba. Much evidence and testimony shows that Dallas nightclub
owner Jack Ruby was involved in the same operations as “Jack La Rue.”
Unbeknownst to Bobby in 1959 while he was fruitlessly looking for
6
LEGACY OF SECRECY
the mysterious “Jack La Rue,” Jack Ruby was running guns to Cuba
with La Rue’s associates while also being used by Marcello as a mes-
senger to Trafficante. Despite their setbacks in tracking down “La Rue”
and Trafficante, JFK and Bobby were more successful in getting testi-
mony from Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and Teamster chief Jimmy
Hoffa: Newsreel footage shows Bobby verbally sparring with each, with
mutual contempt.
JFK officially launched his presidential campaign in that same Sen-
ate hearing room, before eventually winning the extremely close 1960
election. While the media often focuses on possible mob support in West
Virginia arranged by Joseph Kennedy, and the Chicago Mafia’s role
in swinging that city to JFK (as if powerful Mayor Daley’s help didn’t
matter), more Mafia support went to JFK’s opponent, Vice President
Richard Nixon. According to a trusted Justice Department informant,
in September 1960, “Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash
which was going to Nixon” with the aid of Jimmy Hoffa. Marcello’s half
million was to be matched by other Mafia bosses, including “the mob
boys in . . . Florida,” like Trafficante, who were no doubt fearful of what
a Kennedy presidency might mean for them.4
Once JFK took office in 1961, he appointed his brother Bobby as Attor-
ney General of the United States, and, with a prosecutor’s zeal, Bobby
immediately made Carlos Marcello, Jimmy Hoffa, and Tampa’s Santo
Trafficante prime targets for investigation. Bobby eventually pressured
J. Edgar Hoover, now officially Bobby’s subordinate, into making some
efforts against the Mafia, but in the meantime Bobby developed his
own staff of special prosecutors in the Justice Department. In addition
to his staff of Mafia prosecutors, Bobby organized a separate Justice
Department group, informally called the “Get Hoffa Squad,” to target
the Teamster leader. Bobby Kennedy used compartmentalization for
security and administrative reasons, keeping the Get Hoffa Squad and
his Mafia prosecutors almost completely separate. This tactic would
have grave repercussions around the time of JFK’s assassination, when
both groups were kept separate not only from each other, but also from