Authors: Lamar Waldron
arms he had stolen from the AMWORLD supplies.20
Still in favor with the CIA was bomb expert Luis Posada, even though
CIA files indicated his “involvement in [a] 1965 attempt to overthrow
[the] Guatemalan government.” That summer, the CIA had asked
Posada to pass “silencers, C-4 explosive, [and] detonators to” a Miami
organized-crime figure and to Norman Rothman, an associate of Santo
Trafficante and Jack Ruby. Shortly after that, Posada was building
“bombs for RECE and working directly with Mas Canosa,” who would
later reign as the top exile leader in the US for almost two decades. After
Posada passed a lie-detector test, the CIA pronounced its bomb maker
to be “of good character, very reliable, [and] security conscious.” The
CIA made him a Technical Supervisor, paying him $400 a month, and
by September 1966, the Agency sent Posada to the Bahamas to look for
a “suitable site for caching weapons.”21
By the summer of 1966, the CIA was at least tolerating one Cuban exile
whom the Kennedys had banned from US operations: Rolando Mas-
ferrer. The former Cuban death-squad leader wanted to invade Haiti,
which could then be used as a base from which to attack Castro. Masfer-
rer claimed the CIA had approved his effort—a statement that would be
hard to believe if not for the fact that CBS was putting up $200,000 (more
than $1 million in today’s dollars) to buy the rights to film Masferrer’s
invasion of Haiti. As noted earlier, Carl Bernstein highlighted CBS’s
cooperation with the CIA at the highest levels in that era, so it’s difficult
to believe the network would have supported Masferrer if the CIA had
not approved.
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Even if the CIA didn’t give its explicit approval to CBS, the Agency
certainly could have stopped the venture by telling CBS that it was
strongly opposed. It’s possible that under the CIA’s new, more covert
backing of anti-Castro operations, Helms or FitzGerald wanted to see
CBS take the risk. If Masferrer’s plan worked, the CIA could use Haiti
as a new base for anti-Castro operations. If Masferrer’s plan failed, then
CBS, not the CIA, would have a black eye.22
Masferrer’s operation was a bizarre foreshadowing of the reality-TV
trend of forty years later. Ostensibly, he planned to use Cuban exiles
and Haitians to overthrow the cruel Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier
(known as “Papa Doc”). Because Masferrer would then use Haiti as a
staging ground for an invasion of Cuba, Cuban exiles had an incentive
to risk their lives for the Haiti invasion.23
The venture with Masferrer turned into a fiasco for CBS: A young
exile was hurt while CBS filmed his training, and he sued the network
for a million dollars (though he ultimately settled for a fraction of that).
In November 1966, a fake news report of an invasion surfaced, causing
a Haitian hotel to threaten to sue for lost business. Rumors also sprang
up that “Papa Doc” was going to pay Masferrer $200,000—and give
him a base—in exchange for
not
staging the invasion. CBS executives
finally pulled their support, though Masferrer continued his plan to
invade Haiti. However, the sorry episode ended for years any serious
investigation by the TV networks—not just of Masferrer, but also of any
Cuban exile activity—which hindered the exposure of the exiles who
had helped Trafficante and Marcello kill JFK.24
Chapter Twenty-seven
The summer of 1966 saw the first wave of American books critical of the
Warren Report, and the reactions of Bobby Kennedy, Richard Helms,
and J. Edgar Hoover would have far-reaching implications. Prior to that
summer, only a smattering of books about the assassination—most of
which initially appeared overseas—had criticized the Warren Report.
The first significant critical book to originate in America was a paper-
back original,
The Unanswered Questions About President Kennedy’s Assas-
sination
. Written by veteran reporter Sylvan Fox, who would soon join
the
New York Times
, the book generated little media attention. However,
it was a solid work and advanced European author Joachim Joesten’s
pattern of using the Warren Commission’s own Report and twenty-six
volumes of evidence to pick apart their “lone nut, magic bullet” conclu-
sion. By the summer and fall of 1966, Fox’s book was followed by a host
of well-documented, pro-conspiracy books, which also made use of the
government’s own evidence and testimony to make their case. These
included attorney Mark Lane’s
Rush to Judgment
, Sylvia Meagher’s
Accessories After the Fact
, Josiah Thompson’s
Six Seconds in Dallas
, and
Edward Jay Epstein’s
Inquest
.
Bobby Kennedy’s friend, former JFK aide Richard Goodwin, was very
impressed with
Inquest
, which focused on problems with the medical
evidence and the “magic bullet.” Goodwin not only wrote a glowing
review of
Inquest
for the
Washington Post
that appeared on July 23, 1966,
but Goodwin also declared that an “independent group should look at
[Epstein’s] charges and determine whether the Commission investiga-
tion was so flawed that another inquiry is necessary.”
Goodwin’s comments were the subject of an article in the next day’s
New York Times
, which pointed out that he was “the first member of the
President’s inner circle to suggest publicly that an official re-examination
be made of the Warren Report.” The following day, Goodwin was at
Bobby’s New York apartment, trying to talk to him about
Inquest
and
the need for a new investigation. However, Bobby could reply only, “I’m
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
sorry, Dick, I just can’t focus on it.” Goodwin persisted, telling Bobby,
“We should find our own investigator—someone with absolute loyalty
and discretion.”1
Bobby suggested, “You might try Carmine Bellino. He’s the best in
the country.” Bobby had worked with the investigative accountant at the
Justice Department, after originally using him as a Senate investigator to
unravel Hoffa’s and Marcello’s complex criminal financial dealings. Bel-
lino would have been ideal, given not only his experience with Bobby,
but also his former work with Guy Banister and Robert Maheu. Years
later, Bellino would help to lead the Senate Watergate investigators as
they exposed the criminal activity of several AMWORLD veterans.2
The conversation between Bobby and Goodwin soon turned to other
matters, but later that night, Bobby returned to the subject of the assas-
sination. He said, “About that other thing. I never thought it was the
Cubans. If anyone was involved it was organized crime. But there’s
nothing I can do about it. Not now.” Four years after Richard Good-
win first wrote that account in 1988, he told Bobby’s biographer, Jack
Newfield, that Bobby had specifically pointed to “that mob guy in New
Orleans.”3 It was as if Bobby couldn’t bear to say the name of the man
who had murdered his brother.
Perhaps it’s just as well that Goodwin didn’t pursue an investigation
at that time using Bellino. As Goodwin told us in an interview when he
confirmed the above account, he didn’t know about the JFK-Almeida
coup plan. Bobby couldn’t tell him all about it because Goodwin still
worked for his hated rival, Lyndon Johnson. In addition, Bobby didn’t
tell Goodwin that he had already attempted private investigations of
JFK’s murder, to no avail. However, Goodwin’s pleas may have pro-
vided a spark that would ignite a new round of private investigations
for Bobby in the coming months.4
In the meantime, the renewed public interest in JFK’s murder spawned
by the new books weighed increasingly on Bobby. On October 30, 1966,
Bobby told Arthur Schlesinger that he “wondered how long he could
continue to avoid comment on the [Warren] Report.” Schlesinger wrote
that while Bobby “believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse
it . . . he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic
business.”5
However, the rising tide of publicity due to the books didn’t look like
it would crest soon, and one book—Lane’s
Rush to Judgement
—was soon
high on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Bobby had to make sure the
medical evidence was secure, so the day after his remarks to Schlesinger,
Bobby ordered the lawyer for the Kennedy estate to transfer much of
the autopsy evidence to the official custody of the National Archives.
However, Bobby didn’t include the steel container that apparently held
JFK’s brain and tissue samples taken from around the wounds. Also
missing from the transfer were some of the autopsy photos, including
those of JFK’s open chest and others official photographers had taken at
the Bethesda autopsy; even today, these photos are not at the National
Archives.6
FBI and Congressional files show that J. Edgar Hoover was very wor-
ried about the new books attacking the Warren Report’s conclusions.
Hoover and the FBI had plenty of intelligence failures to cover up, from
Joseph Milteer to the Mafia threats against JFK to Jack Ruby’s Mafia
ties. The counteroffensive Hoover developed would include prominent
journalists, a Supreme Court justice, and even electronic surveillance of
members of Congress and critical journalists.
Hoover’s use of the US media was probably even more sophisticated
than that of Helms and the CIA. After all, Hoover had been ruling the
FBI and using the media long before the CIA was created, having made
himself a celebrity and turned “G-men” into movie heroes back in the
1930s. By 1967, a constant stream of books, articles, and even a weekly
TV show praised the FBI and its Director. Helms’s envy of the
televi-
sion program
The FBI
would eventually prod Helms to pressure Holly-
wood executive Jack Valenti to turn E. Howard Hunt’s spy novels into
a TV show, just weeks before Watergate. Only after J. Edgar Hoover’s
death would investigators find that the books Hoover had supposedly
authored were actually written by FBI personnel at government expense,
although Hoover had kept the proceeds.7
On November 13, 1966, Hoover had an internal FBI memo issued
regarding how to deal with critics of the Warren Report. Intended only
for use within the FBI, it makes a surprising admission, confirming that
the FBI’s “basic investigation was substantially completed by November
26, 1963,” the day after Oswald’s murder—inadvertently acknowledg-
ing the rush to judgment that critics claimed. The memo suggests that
FBI media assets should stress the FBI conducted “approximately 25,000
interviews” This leaves out the fact (included in a CIA memo) that a
number of those were actually “reinterviews” of the same witnesses,
sometimes conducted because the interviewee was at odds with the
FBI’s hastily reached conclusion.8
More than a month before the FBI’s November 13, 1966, anti-critics
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memo was issued, Hoover received what he considered a green light
from LBJ in the matter, conveyed through Supreme Court Justice Abe
Fortas. Declassified files show that Hoover had already long been wag-
ing a campaign against critics of the FBI and the Warren Report, so LBJ’s
message simply gave Hoover the presidential stamp of approval to do
what he had already been doing.
On October 7, 1966, Clyde Tolson had written a memo to Hoover
about his meeting that day with “Justice Abe Fortas in his chambers at
the Supreme Court.” Fortas had requested the meeting so that he could
give Tolson some information for Hoover. Earlier that day, Fortas had
met with LBJ, who was “extremely concerned regarding the rash of
books” about JFK’s assassination. LBJ was also concerned about Wil-
liam Manchester’s forthcoming book authorized by the Kennedy fam-
ily,
Death of a President
, fearing that it would make him look bad. LBJ’s
concerns were not surprising, given the impending 1968 election and
the possibility that Bobby Kennedy might challenge LBJ from within his
own party. Justice Fortas told Tolson that “Chief Justice Warren shared
the concern of the President” about the books. Like LBJ, “Warren felt that
[Hoover] should attempt to set the record straight by making informa-
tion available to the public,” since Warren believed that as Chief Justice,
he shouldn’t speak out publicly on the assassination. Warren was even
willing “to make certain that various documents were declassified,” and
offered to personally deal with officials or agencies that might object to
their release.9
Fortas said he was relaying LBJ’s request for assistance to Tolson “on
an extremely confidential basis” so that Tolson could take it to Hoover.
Fortas was anxious to help and suggested that Hoover rebut the critics
via “a book, a series of articles, or through the medium of one lengthy