Authors: Lamar Waldron
another, even more immediate problem. Rosselli’s power flowed largely
from Sam Giancana, but that too was at risk. Giancana had been in
prison for almost a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury under
grant of immunity. The grand jury’s term was almost up, but the govern-
ment could empanel a new one and keep Giancana in prison for another
year. Control of the Chicago Mafia had already slipped from Giancana’s
grasp, though he was still a figure to be reckoned with—but another year
could end even that, and greatly weaken Rosselli’s clout.
For years, the decision to release Sam Giancana in May 1966 has
been attributed to Bobby’s successors at the Justice Department, but
Congressional investigators found that the CIA actually played a part
in Giancana’s release. Richard Helms wanted to keep Giancana’s role
in the CIA-Mafia plots secret, but someone must have suggested that
might not happen if Giancana faced another year in prison. Based on
the timing, that someone was very likely Rosselli.7
Rosselli finally got some good news when Sam Giancana was quietly
released on May 30, 1966. However, the event created a political firestorm
in the press. Giancana, worried that the government might change its
mind, fled to Mexico, where he was joined by longtime associate Rich-
ard Cain.8 That left Rosselli to face his immigration problem without
help from his formerly powerful patron. According to an FBI report, by
June 1966, Rosselli “looked sick and worried and recently has not had
his usual dapper appearance,” despite the fact that the FBI observed a
“very attractive blonde woman . . . staying at Rosselli’s apartment” and
“cooking his meals.” Rosselli knew he needed a big score, a strong new
patron, and a way to deal with his immigration problems—and soon.9
The roots of Rosselli’s solution came from one of Hoffa’s attempts to
overturn his convictions. Hoffa felt that Bobby Kennedy had used ille-
gal wiretaps against him. At that time, laws didn’t allow wiretap evi-
dence to be used in court—only phone records (demonstrating that a
call was made to a certain number on a particular date) were admissible.
Hoover’s FBI utilized illegal and legal phone taps extensively, but the
transcripts of even the legal taps, and the evidence gleaned from them,
couldn’t be used in court. If Hoffa could prove that his conviction was
based on such evidence, he would go free.10
Hoffa had encouraged Missouri Senator Edward Long, one of his
biggest supporters in Congress, to hold hearings on Justice Department
phone taps, particularly those authorized by Bobby Kennedy. LBJ aide
Bill Moyers told Richard Goodwin, Bobby’s friend and now LBJ’s top
speech writer, that Long was “out to get Bobby” on behalf of Hoffa, and
that LBJ was “egging him on” to get back at his political rival. Though
Bobby still spoke approvingly of LBJ in public, several months earlier,
Bobby had started to talk about the need for peace negotiations with
Vietnam, and LBJ believed that his hated adversary was betraying him
yet again.11
One of the witnesses that Senator Long’s committee called was Robert
Maheu, who had been involved in the bugging incident that first tipped
off the FBI about the CIA-Mafia plots. At that point, Senator Long and
the rest of Congress knew only about the bugging incident, not about the
plots. Because of Maheu’s increasing amounts of work for the reclusive
Howard Hughes, he wanted to avoid doing anything that could dam-
age that relationship. According to Rosselli’s biographers, Maheu “con-
tacted the CIA general counsel” about the matter. Richard Helms didn’t
want Congress finding out about the CIA-Mafia plots or the CIA’s own
illegal domestic surveillance, so the CIA’s general counsel “persuaded
Long to drop his demand that Maheu testify.”
While it satisfied Maheu and Helms in the short term, this incident
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
would have several important ramifications in the long run. Rosselli
would see yet again how the threat of exposing the CIA-Mafia plots
could be used to blackmail the CIA. Also, because Maheu retained his
powerful position with Howard Hughes, Rosselli could use his relation-
ship with Maheu to get to Hughes.
It’s ironic that Senator Long’s counsel for his Hoffa-inspired hearings
was attorney Bernard Fensterwald. Apparently intrigued by what he
heard from the CIA and observed while working for Long, Fensterwald
would soon begin a quest to learn more. He would become one of the
most important JFK assassination researchers, an attorney for figures
like James McCord and James Earl Ray, and a leading Freedom of Infor-
mation Act attorney who tried to pry crucial JFK files from reluctant
agencies.
When Senator Long’s hearings failed to produce the dramatic revela-
tions that Jimmy Hoffa needed, the Teamster president turned to Carlos
Marcello and Santo Trafficante for help. Though Trafficante was closer
in some ways to Hoffa because they shared attorney Frank Ragano,
Marcello had more power nationally. Later investigations showed that
Marcello spent many of his days in his office at the Town and Country
Motel, receiving requests from mob bosses, businessmen, and politicians
who wanted his help. While most of those seeking his favor were from
Louisiana and the surrounding states, some were from other regions
of the country. As long as the deal was profitable and Marcello got his
cut, he was happy to use his clout, muscle, and financial power to help
himself by helping them.
Marcello and Trafficante would have also been very concerned about
Rosselli’s legal troubles and the loss of their old ally Giancana. Rosselli’s
influence in Las Vegas was still useful to the mob bosses, since their Mafia
associates controlled most of the city’s major casinos. Besides, after the
Joe Valachi fiasco, they knew it was far better for Rosselli to remain free
than to wind up in prison, where an aging Mafia don might say anything
not to die. In addition, Rosselli’s possible deportation would have had
special resonance for Marcello, who potentially faced the same fate. The
problems of Hoffa and Rosselli demanded that Marcello and Trafficante
come up with an effective course of action.
FBI reports say that in June 1966, Carlos Marcello “visited Santo Traf-
ficante at his Tampa, Florida home . . . [and] during this period Carlos
Marcello and Trafficante had several lengthy private conversations.”
These talks had to be away from family and their usual associates, so
the FBI notes that “Marcello and Trafficante sat alone in the backyard
[of] Trafficante’s home” for hours.12
Marcello and Trafficante had plotted and planned JFK’s assassination
for more than a year, but they didn’t have that much time now. Just weeks
after the two men strategized in Tampa, the FBI says, “over the July 4
weekend, Santo Trafficante . . . visited Carlos Marcello at his Churchill
Farms Estate.” At the same place where Marcello and Ferrie had plotted
JFK’s murder, “several lengthy private conversations occurred [while]
Marcello and Trafficante walked out into the middle of the fields behind
the main house and sat for many hours.” The Mafia chiefs wanted to
be sure there was absolutely no chance that their conversations were
bugged. The plans they developed to aid Rosselli and Hoffa would
unfold over the next several months and into early 1967.13
Richard Helms and Bobby Kennedy shared some of the same concerns
about Long’s hearings and Giancana’s release, though each man was
grappling with his own worries as well. Richard Helms had been forced
to deal with the issue of the CIA-Mafia plots twice in only a month, and
on June 24, 1966, a “summary of the operation [was] prepared by the
[CIA’s] Office of Security.” The more people who knew even vaguely
about the plots, either inside the CIA or out, the greater the chance the
plans would leak, unraveling the cover-up Helms had managed so care-
fully on his climb to the CIA’s highest post. Helms knew he would have
to deal with the Rosselli matter at some point, but it wasn’t as pressing as
the Giancana and Maheu situations had been. In Rosselli’s case, Helms
would prove reluctant to play the same card a third time.14
Bobby Kennedy must have had mixed feelings about Sam Giancana’s
release. On one hand, a year in jail was a small price to pay for whatever
role he’d played in JFK’s murder. On the other hand, few high-level
mobsters were ever imprisoned for any length of time, and almost never
for a hit. Bobby also knew from his contacts in the Justice Department
that Mafia prosecutions had fallen to less than half the number he had
overseen in 1963. Finally, like Helms, Bobby didn’t want the CIA-Mafia
plots coming out. He was already struggling to not be tainted by Sena-
tor Long’s surveillance investigation, and another scandal could end
his political career. As Bobby would soon confide to trusted associates,
becoming president was the only way he would really be able to find
his brother’s killers and bring them to justice.
Bobby faced other issues that, for him, were supplanting mob pros-
ecutions. Though he had been an undistinguished freshman senator
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so far, his trip to South Africa in June 1966 seemed to reinvigorate him,
and perhaps made him even more sensitive to the plight of minorities
and the poor in the US.15 He also saw with alarm what was happen-
ing in America in the summer of 1966: James Meredith, the first black
student at the University of Mississippi, was shot in the back during
a demonstration. Race riots broke out in Chicago and Atlanta. Martin
Luther King denounced the “Black Power” advocates who had egged
on the Atlanta rioters, only to be attacked by whites during a peaceful
demonstration just outside of Chicago.16 President Johnson’s attention
was increasingly consumed by Vietnam, so if LBJ’s dream of a “Great
Society” was to be fulfilled, some other leader would have to work with
Dr. King and others to make it a reality.
Bobby now paid little attention to Cuba; LBJ also wanted to avoid
bringing it back into the headlines before the 1966 Congressional elec-
tions. A 1966 FBI memo again raised the possibility that Soviet missiles
were still in Cuba, something no president could prove wasn’t true. In
the wake of Cubela’s imprisonment, any serious coup plans seemed out
of the question. One of the Cuban officials who had approached the CIA
in the summer of 1964 had been stripped of his rank and position, but
at least he wasn’t imprisoned like Cubela or Menoyo. By 1966, the CIA
had no way of telling whether any of the disgruntled Cuban officials
were safe to deal with.17
As a result, Richard Helms would have to keep the pot boiling with
actions that stood little chance of blowing up in his face—and little
chance of really changing things in Cuba. Operations to kill Castro and
make small raids continued, but they were fewer and had to be more
“deniable,” looking as if they were staged only by exiles, not backed by
the US. Unlike the CIA’s usual covert efforts to acquire intelligence about
Cuba, these operations had to be conducted under much deeper cover.
As noted earlier, David Atlee Phillips apparently continued using his
“Maurice Bishop” cover identity to deal occasionally with Alpha 66’s
Antonio Veciana, probably on trips to the US from his post as CIA Station
Chief in the Dominican Republic. Congressional investigators found
that Veciana was of interest to the DIA’s Army Intelligence in 1966, so
military intelligence may have been used as a cutout to hide Phillips’s
and the CIA’s real role with Veciana.18
Various incidents made the news in Cuba, but received little coverage
in the US: a supposed “CIA agent” captured in Cuba on June 1, 1966; a
September bombing, by plane, of an electric plant being constructed in
Cuba; and an American pilot reported as being “shot down and captured
after dropping weapons and espionage equipment” into Cuba. It was
hard to tell which were CIA operations and which were done solely by
exiles—and that was the point, the way Helms knew it had to be from
then onward.19
Most of the more established Cuban exile leaders were gradually
being phased out in favor of a new, more violent generation. Even
though Artime was involved in scandals, the CIA still paid him $5,000
per month until June 1966, when his payments dropped to $3,000 each
month. There was talk in Miami’s Little Havana that Harry Williams
might come back to replace Artime, but it was only a rumor—Harry was
devoting himself to his family and business. As for Artime, he agreed
to officially terminate his relationship with the CIA at the end of 1966.
Artime would pursue business interests, traveling widely in Central
America and the Caribbean, while he continued to sell off some of the