Authors: Lamar Waldron
Fiorini, who had been involved in a potential aircraft deal with Artime
in Dallas.14 One of Hunt’s associates actually worked for Trafficante,
while Hunt knew and sometimes worked with Rosselli’s good friend
David Morales. When added to the information about Hunt mentioned
in Chapter 2, it appears likely that Hunt did know about Rosselli’s work
on the unauthorized Castro assassination plots.
Whether E. Howard Hunt knew Rosselli had also been conspiring
with Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante to assassinate JFK is another
matter. While Harry told us that Hunt’s associate who worked for Traf-
ficante was involved in JFK’s assassination, Harry didn’t say that Hunt
participated (even though Harry considered Hunt “a son of a bitch” and
a man of “dubious” character, whom Harry didn’t trust). Hunt’s vary-
ing stories about his whereabouts on November 22 could be due to the
secrecy surrounding his meetings that day regarding the JFK-Almeida
coup plan, since it had never been exposed or declassified while Hunt
was testifying in court or to Congressional committees. Also, various
photos that some researchers thought were of E. Howard Hunt in Dealey
Plaza have so far all turned out to be of someone else. Weighing against
Hunt’s knowing involvement is the fact that he knew the coup was only
ten days away: Killing JFK would delay, if not prevent, the assassination
of Fidel, whom Hunt hated with a passion. Hunt was extremely ambi-
tious, and it seems counterintuitive for him to have sabotaged a covert
plan in which he had a pivotal role, one that would be rewarded if the
coup succeeded.
It’s possible Hunt was simply used by his associates with mob ties,
men who were working for Trafficante and Rosselli. It’s also conceivable
that Hunt’s culpability was at the level of having “guilty knowledge,”
a term an informant used to describe Hunt’s longtime friend Artime to
Congressional investigators. However, given the fact that so many of
Hunt’s associates were working with the Mafia—specifically people,
like Trafficante, who had JFK killed—it can’t be ruled out that Hunt was
knowingly involved, that his hatred of JFK overshadowed any desire the
ardently anticommunist Hunt had to see Fidel eliminated. The actions of
Hunt and his associates described in future chapters provide additional
insights that will help to make his role clearer.
While Harry was at lunch, he learned that JFK had been shot. This must
have been a stunning blow for Harry, both on a personal level (since he
had gotten to know JFK) and for Harry’s crusade to free Cuba. As his
meeting with the CIA men resumed, they learned that JFK was dead.
Harry said that Hunt and the other agent present both acted cool when
they heard the news, unlike the very high-ranking CIA official who
was present. That was likely Lyman Kirkpatrick, who had probably
just arrived from CIA headquarters. Harry said that the high official
“really felt it” and was “upset”—so much so that he got mad at Harry
because he felt Harry was acting too calm in response to the news. Harry
explained to us that the word of JFK’s death really shocked him, but
156
LEGACY OF SECRECY
“when things get tough, I get very cool” and he tried to keep calm, just
as he had when he was under fire at the Bay of Pigs.
But Kirkpatrick said, “Don’t you feel” anything? Don’t “you care that
President Kennedy was killed?”
Harry looked at him and said, “Look, let’s talk about all this.” But
Kirkpatrick seemed suspicious of Harry after that, and the meeting soon
broke up. Perhaps Kirkpatrick had misinterpreted Harry’s remark in
the morning session about getting professionals to eliminate Fidel, and
wondered if Harry or his associates had something to do with JFK’s
death. In actuality, Kirkpatrick should have been much more suspicious
of Hunt and some of his associates.15 For that matter, when Kirkpatrick
met with McCone and Helms at CIA headquarters at 5:00 PM, the for-
mer Inspector General would have been suspicious of Helms if he had
known the secrets Helms was keeping from him and McCone.
Harry headed back to his room at the Ebbitt Hotel, where the CIA had its
Cuban and other Hispanic visitors stay. He had arranged earlier to meet
journalist Haynes Johnson there. Haynes didn’t know it, but Harry had
thought it would be their last meeting before he went to Cuba for the
coup. Along with Artime and two other exiles, Harry had been working
with Haynes on a book about the Bay of Pigs. It was part of the public-
ity blitz engineered by Bobby Kennedy mentioned earlier, that would
include an NBC News special about the Bay of Pigs, hosted by the lead-
ing news anchors of the day, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. Bobby
hoped it would all be timed to show off the former Bay of Pigs leaders
who would become part of the new leadership in Cuba after the coup.
Two months earlier, Artime had told one of his CIA case officers about
the book, in a memo that has recently been declassified. Artime told CIA
officer Henry Hecksher that he believed the book was “being published
under the auspices of the Attorney General, who [had] introduced the
author” to Artime. At that point, Artime had “received royalties in the
total amount of $2,800,” and Artime said, “The book is about ready for
publication.” (Its appearance was apparently delayed after JFK’s death.)
Artime had been concerned that the book might criticize the CIA, and
Hecksher reported Artime’s concerns to Desmond FitzGerald.16
Before Haynes arrived at the Ebbitt Hotel, Harry had already put
in a call to Bobby’s office at the Justice Department. Bobby called back
shortly after Haynes arrived. Anthony Summers, who investigated the
timing of the call for
Vanity Fair,
puts Bobby’s call at approximately
4:00 PM (Eastern), fifteen minutes before the first network news reports
of Oswald’s arrest. It could not have happened even a minute later,
because at 4:01 PM, Bobby received a phone call from J. Edgar Hoover
alerting him to Oswald’s arrest. Based on Hoover’s declassified notes,
that call must have lasted at least ten or twelve minutes; Bobby then left
his estate at 4:15 PM, heading for the Pentagon, to meet with General
Maxwell Taylor and Defense Secretary McNamara.17 Our most recent
analysis indicates that Bobby’s call to Harry was probably made at least
a few minutes prior to 4:00 PM, sometime after McCone left Bobby’s at
3:30 PM.
After Bobby had spoken on the phone to Harry for a few moments,
Harry mentioned that Haynes Johnson was with him. Bobby asked to
speak to Haynes, who writes that “Robert Kennedy was utterly in con-
trol of his emotions when he came on the line, and sounded almost
studiedly brisk as he said: ‘One of your guys did it.’”18
It’s important to stress that both Haynes Johnson and Harry agree
that Bobby said, “One of your guys did it”—killed JFK—to Haynes, not
to Harry. Haynes confirmed that to us in 1992, and again in May 2007.
Harry said Bobby never voiced any suspicion like that to him on that
day or any other; a close Kennedy associate—who knew Bobby, Haynes,
and Harry—backed up Harry’s statement.19
Haynes wrote that he assumed at the time that Bobby had received an
early FBI or Secret Service report that “had identified Lee Harvey Oswald
as being involved with the anti-Castro group.” Haynes may have been
correct, but in ways he didn’t realize, since he was unaware of the JFK-
Almeida coup plan. If Bobby received a report about Oswald prior to
Hoover’s 4:01 PM call, there is no record of it. Any such report would
have had to come from the CIA or the DIA (particularly Naval Intel-
ligence), since certain officials at both agencies knew that Oswald had
been under “tight surveillance.” Oswald’s involvement with “the anti-
Castro group” included a visit to one of Artime’s small training camps
outside of New Orleans, the work with Banister and Ferrie described by
CIA agent Hunter Leake, and even Oswald’s trip to Mexico City.
However, the tight timing makes it uncertain if Bobby had even
heard Oswald’s name by the time he spoke to Haynes. Even J. Edgar
Hoover didn’t find out about Oswald until 3:50 PM (Eastern time). That
means it’s possible, even probable, that Bobby’s reaction and comment
to Haynes was due to whatever feeling or clue had caused him to ques-
tion McCone a short time earlier. That was likely the fact that JFK was
shot by one or more snipers while riding in an open car, mirroring the
plan for Castro that a later AMWORLD memo revealed. In any event, the
158
LEGACY OF SECRECY
evidence shows that the link Bobby had in mind was Artime or someone
in his organization, and would also explain why Bobby would make the
“your guys” comment to Haynes and not Harry, due to the friction that
had developed between Harry and Artime.
Haynes would later write that within a year or so after JFK’s death,
he heard that Artime was involved in the drug trade. In addition,
Haynes also wrote about one of Artime’s protégés during Watergate,
who became a major Miami drug lord at the same time Trafficante still
wielded power there.20
Only after twenty years had passed would Haynes Johnson write a
detailed account of his November 22, 1963, meeting with Harry Wil-
liams. Even then he would avoid naming Harry, whose name had not
appeared in any of the Congressional reports on JFK’s assassination
issued a few years earlier (though it had surfaced in some staff memos).
In 1981 Haynes mentioned Bobby’s remark very briefly in a long article
about a distinguished Bay of Pigs veteran. Otherwise, the only time
Haynes talked about those activities was in 1973, when he was inter-
viewed by a researcher about Harry, Bobby, and the exiles. However,
only a few parts of the interview were summarized in a small newsletter,
so it received no attention from newspaper or television journalists.
Why have so many mainstream journalists been reluctant to inves-
tigate or write about the evidence of a conspiracy in JFK’s death? One
reason involves just how many highly regarded journalists were friends
with JFK or Bobby, or Helms, or Hoover, or others involved in various
aspects of the story. For example, Ben Bradlee, the longtime
Washing-
ton Post
editor who became famous during the newspaper’s Watergate
investigation, was very close to JFK. Another example is
New York Times
reporter Tad Szulc, who actually worked with Bobby, Morales, and
others on developing the AMTRUNK operation, trying to find a high-
ranking Cuban leader to stage a coup before Almeida emerged. How-
ever, it’s also worth noting that a few journalists, like Haynes and Szulc,
did eventually attempt to make some of their information known.
Not long after Bobby spoke to Harry and made his provocative remark
to Haynes Johnson, he left his estate and headed for the Pentagon. But
sometime prior to that, earlier in the afternoon and probably while
McCone was en route to Bobby’s Hickory Hill estate, Bobby had made
another intriguing call—to CIA headquarters, according to journalists
George Bailey and Seymour Freidin. (Freidin was the
New York Herald-
Tribune’
s foreign-affairs editor, later revealed by Jack Anderson to have
been a paid CIA informant in the 1960s; author David Talbot believes
Freidin got his information about Bobby directly from one of his CIA
contacts.) Freidin says that Bobby spoke to a high-level CIA official at
headquarters about the shooting of JFK and demanded to know: “Did
your outfit have anything to do with this horror?”21
Viewing this call in context with Bobby’s similar question to McCone,
his flat-out statement to Haynes, and his call to Julius Draznin, we can
clearly see Bobby’s suspicion, that someone connected with the anti-
Castro operations and the Mafia had turned their sights on JFK. Also,
it’s possible that information Bobby received from McCone during their
long talk, or as additional details about the shooting emerged, allowed
Bobby to evolve from questioning the CIA to making a declaration to
Haynes.
As cited earlier, the timing probably prevented Bobby from knowing
Oswald’s name when he made his statement to Haynes, but the pos-
sibility can’t be excluded. A few years ago, a Cuban exile associate of
Artime made an uncorroborated claim to several authors that Oswald’s
name had been reported to Bobby prior to JFK’s death, but this man
did so while apparently trying to justify a preassassination encounter
he claimed to have had with Oswald. Also, this Artime associate never
mentioned any of Artime’s Mafia ties, thus seriously undermining his
own credibility. However, even without those claims, we can’t rule
out that Bobby might have had some general awareness of Oswald (or
Hidell, the alias first found by police on an ID card in his wallet) as one