Authors: Lamar Waldron
death and the problems many experts have documented about the
shooting skills required to assassinate JFK, and the poor quality of the
Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Book Depository. As an internal Navy
and Defense Intelligence Agency matter, it was probably important for
officials involved with the surveillance of Oswald, and with whatever
operations he participated in after he returned from Russia, to cover
themselves with such an investigation. At the same time, the officials
and those conducting the investigation were probably unaware that
some of the people assisting with the surveillance and operations, like
Guy Banister, were actually working for Carlos Marcello.
Early results from the Naval Intelligence investigation, or the fact
that Naval Intelligence was keeping such close tabs on Oswald, might
account for an unusual “top secret, eyes only” memo about Oswald. Less
than two weeks after Oswald’s death, even as LBJ and McCone were still
worried that Oswald might have been acting for Cuba or the Soviets,
“Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff” implied that the
“President’s Special Assistant for national security Affairs,” McGeorge
Bundy (who had held the same position under JFK), was able to pro-
vide some type of “assurances re: Oswald” that he was not an agent for
Castro. Only an official in an agency with access to the surveillance on
Oswald, like Naval Intelligence or the CIA, could have given Bundy the
information necessary to make such a claim.31
Following his brother’s death, Bobby Kennedy had the most difficult
task of all the people pursuing secret investigations of JFK’s murder.
Despite his sturdy and efficient manner immediately following JFK’s
murder, Bobby soon drained his reserves of strength and became a shat-
tered, tortured man, according to those who saw him away from the
public eye. Historian John H. Davis, Marcello’s biographer, was a cousin
of Jackie Kennedy who observed Bobby at the White House following
JFK’s funeral. In contrast to the stoic, solid demeanors of other fam-
ily members—like Jackie, Ted, and Rose—Davis described Bobby as “a
destroyed man . . . crushed by the death of his brother.” Other Kennedy
associates made similar observations. Yet at times Bobby would sum-
mon the resolve to have one of his trusted associates look into JFK’s
assassination. We’ve already noted his request to Chicago union expert
Julius Draznin to look into Mafia ties to JFK’s murder, even before Ruby
surfaced in the case. That was just the first of several attempts Bobby
made; others included investigations by his top Hoffa prosecutor, Walter
Sheridan; his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz; Daniel Patrick Moyni-
han, a former Los Angeles police chief; and at least one top Kennedy
aide. However, in each case except one, the investigators weren’t told
about the JFK-Almeida coup plan or about the initial suspicions Bobby
had voiced to McCone and Haynes Johnson.
We spoke to the one investigator for Bobby who did know about those
activities. He told us of his belief in a conspiracy involving Marcello,
Trafficante, and Rosselli, though he indicated his conclusion was based
on information that started coming out only in the mid-1970s, facts that
were unavailable to him or to Bobby in 1963 or 1964.32 So, Bobby was
left without definitive evidence, and at times seemed ambivalent about
knowing what his investigators had uncovered. After all, there was
little he could do with their conclusions without exposing Commander
Almeida, revealing the Tampa and Chicago plots he had covered up,
or giving Marcello or Hoffa ammunition to claim the US government’s
prosecutions of them were due to Bobby’s suspicions of their involve-
ment in JFK’s murder. Bobby knew what type of evidence he would need
to prosecute even a lower-level member of such a conspiracy, let alone a
godfather like Marcello. Based on his later remarks to close associates,
he knew that only the power of the presidency would allow him to
conduct a truly thorough, secret investigation of his brother’s murder.
It may be no coincidence that even as he decided to run for president in
1968, Bobby was helping a journalist prepare a major exposé of Carlos
Marcello.
While Bobby’s focus would eventually settle on Marcello as being
responsible for his brother’s death, other suspects loomed in the days fol-
lowing Oswald’s murder. We mentioned earlier Bobby’s comment about
the many associates Jack Ruby shared with Jimmy Hoffa. On November
26, Bobby Kennedy talked with Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, possibly
to hear Hill’s reaction to Powers’s and O’Donnell’s accounts of seeing
shots from the grassy knoll.33 With all the evidence coming out of Mexico
City, Bobby considered Castro a possibility until at least December 9,
1963, along with “gangsters” and Hoffa.34
Bobby was aware of reports coming out of Chicago—some hinting at
the Chicago plot, and another saying that “Ruby had recently been in
Chicago [to] pick up a ‘bundle of money’ from Allen Dorfman, a close
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associate of Jimmy Hoffa.” This account surfaced the day Ruby shot
Oswald, and we are sure Bobby knew about it because it originated with
his most trusted Hoffa prosecutor, Walter Sheridan.35 As we discussed
previously, we spoke with two eyewitnesses who saw Ruby receive
approximately $7,000 from a Hoffa associate in Chicago, shortly before
JFK’s canceled November 2, 1963, motorcade there. Sheridan’s report
was apparently from someone familiar with that incident, at least on a
secondhand basis. The Hoffa associate who gave Ruby the money wasn’t
Allen Dorfman. However, Dorfman did handle complicated financial
transactions for Hoffa and the Mafia (he would later provide $500,000 to
Richard Nixon to secure Hoffa’s release from prison), and he may well
have provided the untraceable cash to Hoffa’s associate in 1963, to give
to Ruby. Also, Allen Dorfman’s father, Paul Dorfman, had known Jack
Ruby for years. In fact, Robert Kennedy had written in his anti-Mafia
book,
The Enemy Within,
about Paul Dorfman’s takeover of a union that
first cemented Hoffa’s relationship with the Mafia. As Bobby described
in his book, the union’s takeover was accomplished after the union’s
“founder and secretary-treasurer was murdered.” Not mentioned in
Bobby’s book, but confirmed by police files, is that a witness who kept
his mouth shut about the murder at the time was a young Jack Ruby.
However, the reaction of another one of Bobby’s Hoffa prosecutors
to Sheridan’s Ruby-Chicago story would set the tone for any allegations
that surfaced that could expose secrets like the Chicago plot against JFK,
or jeopardize ongoing prosecutions against the individuals Bobby felt
might have been responsible for JFK’s assassination. One of Bobby’s top
Justice Department prosecutors gave the order for “no further inquiry
into this matter [because] the story would give Hoffa an opportunity to
criticize the Justice Department for trying to tie Hoffa in with President
Kennedy’s murder.”36
Bobby apparently struggled with himself over this issue at times,
but in the end he seemed to decide that prosecuting targets like Hoffa
and Marcello for specific, easier-to-prove charges was better than risk-
ing tainting any prosecution of them by linking them publicly to JFK’s
assassination without adequate evidence. Also, Bobby appears not to
have told most of his Hoffa and Mafia prosecutors about things like the
Chicago plot, which was yet another reason Chicago-linked allegations
were not widely pursued or fully shared with the FBI. Hoover’s com-
ment on the whole Ruby-Chicago payoff matter was: “I do wish [the]
Justice Department would mind its own business.”37
Once the FBI took primary jurisdiction over JFK assassination matters,
the Secret Service was, in many ways, the odd man out in the investiga-
tion. Yet it continued to monitor suspects like Chicago ex-Marine Thomas
Vallee, though the released files about him are clearly incomplete. For
example, Vallee, arrested in Chicago with a carload of weapons and
ammo on the day of JFK’s canceled motorcade, apparently wasn’t even
interviewed by the Secret Service or FBI after another ex-Marine, Lee
Oswald, was arrested for JFK’s assassination. This omission occurred
despite the fact that Congressional investigators found a Secret Service
“notation on November 27, 1963, of the similarity between his back-
ground and that of Lee Harvey Oswald.” In spite of this apparent lack
of interest, Congress found that the Secret Service maintained “a record
of extensive, continued investigation of Vallee’s activities until 1968.”38
It’s likely that additional surveillance and investigative files about Vallee
were kept with the other files about the Chicago and Tampa plots, none
of which have been declassified or revealed to Congress.
This secrecy no doubt complicated the FBI’s job when rumors of the
Chicago plot surfaced among newsmen, some of whom had been aware
of the threat and Vallee’s arrest at the time, but had kept that information
away from the public.39 The Secret Service was less than forthcoming
in dealing with its rival, the FBI, about such matters.40 The FBI’s main
objective after JFK’s assassination appears to have been to discredit
such reports and ensure they didn’t make it into print, a goal the Secret
Service shared. Ironically, the source of some newspaper reports about
Oswald visiting Chicago was Rosselli’s associate Richard Cain, who
was still feeding information to the CIA at the time. (CIA reports about
Cain’s activities for them in the weeks after JFK’s death have never been
released.)
The Secret Service also obtained records from other agencies. The
Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) headquarters file on Jack Ruby didn’t
contain much—“just that he was a source on numerous occasions, on
unimportant suspects,” and had been an FBN source “since the 1940s.”
As with the Dallas police, Ruby had been gaming the system, giving
up small fish or problem dealers to gain information and protect his
bosses. However, FBN agents say that Secret Service Chief James Rowley
asked for Ruby’s FBN file on November 25 and, after getting it, never
returned it.41
After Ruby shot Oswald, things started looking up for Carlos Marcello,
who no doubt felt even more relieved about Oswald’s death than did
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Joseph Milteer. Ruby had shown that he could keep his mouth shut
about a murder investigation, and he knew that to cross Marcello would
mean death not just for him, but also for his family. Despite Ruby’s belief
that he would get a light sentence, Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli
made sure that Ruby would spend the rest of his life in prison, and pos-
sibly get the electric chair.
Former Mafia prosecutor G. Robert Blakey writes that shortly after
Ruby shot Oswald, an associate of flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli
got a “call from a Las Vegas attorney, saying that, ‘One of our guys just
bumped off the son of a bitch that gunned down the President. We can’t
move in to handle it, but there’s a million bucks net for Mel if he’ll take
it.’”42 The call didn’t come from Johnny Rosselli, but it did come from his
Las Vegas headquarters hotel, the Desert Inn. Belli soon took the case,
and kept any mention of Ruby’s Mafia contacts out of the trial. Instead
of using Texas’s “sudden passion” defense—the angle Ruby believed
would secure him a short sentence even if he were convicted—Belli used
a strange “psycho-motor defense” that had never been tried before. He
lost, and Ruby was sentenced to death. Belli then went to Mexico City,
where he met with a Mexican official whom the CIA says “directed drug
smuggling.”43 Another CIA file says that Belli himself “was reportedly
involved in illicit drug traffic.”44 Apparently, both Belli and Marcello
got what they wanted. As Marcello’s partner Jimmy Hoffa said in a TV
interview after Ruby shot Oswald, Bobby Kennedy had become “just
another lawyer.”45
Marcello still had the Ferrie and Banister situation to worry about, but
now that Oswald was dead and could never testify about working with
them (or about meeting Marcello), that situation could be contained.
Marcello’s pattern of only using people in the JFK hit who had been—
or were still—assets, informants, or agents for US intelligence or law
enforcement agencies would again prove helpful. Banister—the former
FBI chief for Chicago and once the number-two man in the New Orleans
Police Department, and who had ties to Naval Intelligence through his
friend Guy Johnson—could work behind the scenes to quiet the prob-
lem. After all, Banister had once worked with one of Bobby’s top Justice
Department associates, clearing suspected “reds” for employment. It
wouldn’t be hard for Banister to clear Ferrie, and himself, by saying their