Authors: Lamar Waldron
his job by hiding his unauthorized assassination schemes with Cubela
from other US officials. The
New York Times
reported on March 6, 1966,
that Cubela planned “to shoot Premier Castro with a high-powered tele-
scopic rifle and later share [power] with Mr. Artime.” Former FBI agent
William Turner noted that when LBJ’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk
read about Cubela’s arrest “in the
New York Times
, [he] demanded to
know what the CIA’s role might have been.” The CIA’s “Helms sent him
a soothing memo stating that contact with Cubela had been confined
to ‘the express purpose’ of intelligence gathering. ‘The Agency was not
involved with Cubela in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro,’ Helms wrote
[to Rusk], ‘nor did it ever encourage him to attempt such an act.’”26
Helms’s statement was clearly false, as Rusk himself finally learned
almost ten years later, when Senate hearings finally exposed Helms’s
Cubela assassination operation. When we spoke to Dean Rusk about
this incident, his anger about Helms’s deception was still quite evident.
It was the only time in the interview when the consummate diplomat
showed a flash of real emotion. Rusk felt the CIA had gone far beyond
the scope of what the Johnson administration wanted, and then lied to
him about it. His anger at Richard Helms also extended to information
Helms gave him during the Warren Commission investigation, which,
Rusk learned later, was also false.27
Three months after Cubela’s arrest, a small group of exiles, including
Trafficante’s bodyguard, Herminio Diaz, and exile Tony Cuesta, appar-
ently tried to get into Cuba to assassinate Fidel. In March 1966, during
Cubela’s trial, the CIA had heard that Herminio Diaz was planning to
assassinate Fidel.28 In the May 1966 landing, three of the men, including
Diaz, were apparently killed, and two more were captured. One of those
was Tony Cuesta, who was blinded and lost one hand in the attack. The
Cubans identified one of Cuesta’s three dead compatriots as Herminio
Diaz—though it’s unclear how they established his identity—and the
matter seemed to end there.
Or maybe not. A CIA report written almost ten years later by Des-
mond FitzGerald’s former deputy says that while Herminio Diaz “was
identified by Radio Havana as a member of a commando group killed
while trying to land [in Cuba] for the purpose of assassinating Castro . . .
in August 1973, an individual with the same name and year of birth was
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
reportedly involved in narcotics trafficking in Costa Rica. A Cuban exile
source stated that he believed subject [Herminio Diaz] to be identical
with the narcotics trafficker in Costa Rica.”29
Herminio Diaz had been involved in drug smuggling with Santo
Trafficante, and Trafficante maintained a residence in Costa Rica that he
used when investigations flared up in America. Could Herminio and
Trafficante have arranged for Diaz’s seeming death in 1966, by planting
a fake ID on an exile who fit Diaz’s general description and then tip-
ping off Cuban authorities? According to British researcher John Simkin,
during Tony Cuesta’s long imprisonment in Cuba, “Cuesta realized he
had been set up [by] people who organized the assassination of JFK.”
When Tony Cuesta was finally released in 1978 through the efforts of
President Jimmy Carter, Cuesta told Cuban General Fabian Escalante
that Herminio “had been involved in the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy.” Cuesta asked Escalante to keep the information secret until
after Cuesta’s death, and Escalante waited until 1995 to reveal it to a
conference of US historians and officials.30
Whether or not Trafficante was tying up loose ends by having Diaz
killed, or making it look like he was dead, Richard Helms was definitely
cleaning house in 1966. LBJ had been dissatisfied with Admiral Raborn
as CIA Director almost from the start, and had begun grooming Helms
for the top spot. Richard Helms officially became CIA Director on June
30, 1966, putting him in the perfect position to ensure that his unauthor-
ized activities under JFK and LBJ weren’t exposed. Soon after taking
office, Helms terminated a CIA employee tied to Trafficante who had
worked on sensitive portions of the Almeida coup plan. The heyday of
Cuban operations was over, and the new focus was Vietnam and South-
east Asia, giving Helms an opportunity to send several of his operatives
as far away as possible.
Six veterans of AMWORLD and the anti-Castro operations were
shipped off to Laos in 1966, where the US had been waging a secret
war for years. These included Artime’s deputy “Chi Chi” Quintero,
former Miami CIA Chief Ted Shackley, and (after an assignment in South
America) David Morales.31 Some writers have portrayed their transfer
to Laos as a reward, giving them a choice assignment in an intelligence
hotspot where their covert war expertise could flourish. However, living
for long stretches in Laos’s relatively primitive conditions was a long
way from the poolside talks Morales and Shackley had formerly enjoyed
in Miami. Also, Helms knew that their anti-Castro operations had been
a failure at best, and at worst, somehow involved in JFK’s assassination.
(Some historians have deemed the group’s work in Laos, and then in
Vietnam, equally disastrous.) As for Manuel Artime, though he was
trained as a physician, he became a prosperous businessman, no doubt
helped by the money and contacts he had gained from selling off the
AMWORLD supplies. Artime traveled frequently to Central America,
pursuing business ventures with the notoriously corrupt Somoza family,
who ruled Nicaragua. (Marcello shared a Washington lobbyist with the
Somozas.) Artime also apparently maintained his involvement in the
narcotics trade, even as he continued to receive a regular salary from
the CIA into 1966.32
Helms and the CIA would have been aware of several books about
the JFK assassination slated for US publication later in 1966 that were
highly critical of the Warren Commission’s “lone assassin” conclusion.
Coupled with a new development concerning Johnny Rosselli and his
work for the CIA, those books might have made it seem wise for Helms
to keep Morales and the other AMWORLD veterans as far away as
possible from journalists and Congressional hearings. The impending
US books critical of the Warren Report also meant that Helms’s press
and publishing expert, E. Howard Hunt, would be more useful back in
the US.
Chapter Twenty-six
In the spring of 1966, Johnny Rosselli and Jimmy Hoffa began taking
increasingly desperate measures to avoid prison, ultimately setting off
a deadly chain reaction that would eventually lead to Rosselli’s grue-
some dismemberment murder, Hoffa’s disappearance, and the slaying
of Rosselli’s patron Sam Giancana, all in the mid-1970s. Much sooner
would come the brutal ax murder of Eladio del Valle, killed on the same
day David Ferrie died, both in early 1967. All of those deaths would be
linked to Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and the events surrounding
JFK’s assassination.
May 12, 1966, began as a typical morning in Beverly Hills for Johnny
Rosselli, who had led a relaxed and affluent life since JFK’s murder.
A few months after the assassination, Rosselli had moved to a Bev-
erly Glen Boulevard building that his biographers describe as having
“some of the most beautiful and luxurious apartments in the nation.”
Rosselli’s “suite of rooms on the eighth floor overlooked . . . the exclu-
sive Los Angeles Country Club” and was near the Beverly Hills busi-
ness district.1 While Rosselli was taking a stroll near Rodeo Drive that
morning, his serene world changed dramatically when two FBI agents
confronted him. One of them uttered a name that sent a chill through
Rosselli: Filippo Sacco.
The events that led to Rosselli’s fateful encounter with the FBI had
begun just weeks after JFK’s death, when the FBI busted a midlevel Bos-
ton mob courier, who started giving the Bureau information to stay out
of jail. The courier was careful not to tell agents his biggest secrets, but
FBI surveillance finally revealed that the courier had worked for Rosselli
for the past twenty-five years, taking money to the Mafia don’s mother
for her support. Rosselli couldn’t visit his mother himself, because even
though he was known as Johnny Rosselli in the power centers of Las
Vegas and Hollywood, to his Boston family he was Filippo Sacco. An
illegal immigrant who’d come to the US from Italy in 1911, Rosselli had
changed his name to avoid a narcotics charge in the 1920s. Like Marcello,
Rosselli was subject to deportation, something the FBI hadn’t known
about even when Rosselli was serving prison time in the 1940s for his
Hollywood studio shakedown.2
Aware of how much trouble the US had in trying to deport Marcello,
FBI agents built their case carefully for two years before finally confront-
ing Rosselli in May 1966 on a Beverly Hills sidewalk. The Bureau offered
Rosselli a deal if he became an informant for them, but he refused. Ros-
selli then called one of his first CIA contacts, Sheffield Edwards. Edwards
had been one of two CIA officials responsible for bringing Rosselli into
the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro in the summer of 1960.
A brief recap of CIA-Mafia plots is important, since several of the
participants played increasingly crucial roles in the events of 1966 and
beyond, culminating in the Watergate scandal. The plots had originally
begun in 1959, with Jimmy Hoffa as the CIA’s connection to (and cover
for) the Mafia, but they had not succeeded. Much evidence shows that as
the 1960 election approached, candidate—and vice president—Richard
Nixon had pressed the CIA to step up its efforts to kill Fidel. E. Howard
Hunt was also pushing the CIA to assassinate Castro around that time,
and working closely with Nixon’s top military aide for Cuba. CIA Secu-
rity Chief Sheffield Edwards had looked first at using former Chicago
FBI supervisor Guy Banister for a sensitive assignment as a “cover
mechanism” in August 1960, before deciding to use former Chicago
FBI agent Robert Maheu as the CIA’s new conduit to the Mafia. Maheu
and Banister had both worked with another former FBI agent, Carmine
Bellino, after all three left the FBI in the early 1950s.3
By August 1960, Robert Maheu was doing increasing amounts of
work for billionaire Howard Hughes, but since the CIA had helped to set
him up in business in the mid-1950s, Maheu agreed to help the Agency.
Maheu brought Johnny Rosselli into the plots; Rosselli then pulled in
Giancana, who in turn brought in Trafficante (and, according to some
evidence, Frank Fiorini). The hoped-for 1960 October surprise failed to
materialize, but the plots with Rosselli and Trafficante continued. Just
before the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA-Mafia plots failed to
kill Castro, due to CIA miscommunication regarding Tony Varona. The
plots survived, and Sheffield Edwards eventually passed them off to
William Harvey after Richard Helms decided to continue using Rosselli.
However, it fell to Edwards to brief Bobby Kennedy on the plots in May
1962, after a wiretap scandal brought them to J. Edgar Hoover’s atten-
tion. Edwards told Bobby that the plots had ended, though in reality
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
Helms was determined to continue them. Carlos Marcello told an FBI
informant he had joined the CIA-Mafia plots as well.4
By the time Rosselli contacted Sheffield Edwards in May 1966,
Edwards had retired from the CIA but still had high-level contacts at the
Agency, from the days when he’d commanded seven hundred people
as its Security Chief. Edwards immediately told a high-ranking CIA
official about his talk with Rosselli. The smooth, dapper Rosselli had
couched his concern to Edwards in nice language that made it sound as
if he didn’t want the CIA dragged into a messy situation, but Rosselli’s
real goal was clear: He wanted the CIA to get the FBI off his back and
keep him out of jail.5
To make sure the CIA got the message, Rosselli also contacted his old
pal William Harvey. Though the CIA admits that Rosselli and Harvey
had remained in contact since 1964, Harvey no longer had much influ-
ence at the Agency. Rosselli’s other contact with the CIA, David Morales,
wasn’t available, since he was on assignment in South America. Johnny
Rosselli turned to a trusted friend, longtime Hoffa attorney Edward
Morgan, for advice.6 Rosselli and Morgan had a problem in common:
the impending imprisonment of Jimmy Hoffa, whose final appeal was
winding its way to the Supreme Court. Hoffa’s Teamster Pension Fund
was a major source of capital for the Mafia in Las Vegas, and losing
it would have a huge impact on Rosselli and the Chicago Mafia he
represented.
In addition to Rosselli’s immigration trouble with the FBI, he had