Authors: Lamar Waldron
plots. Arthur Schlesinger, who didn’t know about Almeida, observed
Bobby shortly after the column and wrote that “an indefinable sense of
depression hung over him, as if he felt cornered by circumstance and
did not know how to break out.”25
The rest of Jack Anderson’s March 3, 1967, column was designed not
for Bobby, but for other officials in both Washington and New Orleans.
It noted Jim Garrison’s JFK investigation, saying, “Insiders believe he
is following the wrong trails.” The column also addressed the fact that
in 1967, it was still inconceivable to the average American that the US
would try to murder foreign officials. (It would be another eight years
before the American press widely reported such plots.)
Anderson dropped a couple of notable names to indirectly buttress
his case, saying, “Those who may be shocked that the CIA would con-
sider stooping to a political assassination should be reminded of the ugly
nature of what Secretary of State Dean Rusk has called ‘the back-alley
struggle.’” Anderson also quoted “Clark Clifford, head of the President’s
Foreign Intelligence Committee,” regarding CIA operatives who were
captured and then “subjected to the most skillful, most fiendish tortures
[and] reduced to animals.” Clifford’s comments unintentionally sup-
ported Rosselli’s “turned-around assassins” story.26
Anderson foreshadowed today’s debates about the use of waterboard-
ing and other forms of torture against CIA prisoners when he wrote that
“we also play rough” and cited a
New York Times
report that quoted
“‘one of the best-informed men in Washington on this subject’ as saying:
‘When we catch one of them (a Soviet or other agent), it becomes neces-
sary to get everything out of them, and we do it with no holds barred.’”
Besides laying more groundwork for Rosselli’s story, those lines may
have especially worried Richard Helms, who knew the CIA was still
holding Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko in appalling conditions.
It’s ironic that Richard Helms, who had withheld so much from Bobby
and JFK, was one of the few people Bobby could turn to for help and
information in the aftermath of Anderson’s column. Bobby could at
least talk freely to Helms about things like Almeida and the CIA-Mafia
plots, which Bobby had withheld from his current advisors. At that time,
Bobby knew far less about the article than LBJ, who knew at least that
Anderson’s information originated with “Hoffa’s attorney,” Ed Mor-
gan. Helms could help Bobby find out who was talking to Anderson, so
Bobby arranged to meet Helms for lunch the following day.
Before Bobby saw Helms, he had to deal with his own staff. Accord-
ing to journalist Sy Hersh, after reading Anderson’s column, Bobby told
his young assistants, Adam Walinsky and Peter Edelman, a bit about
the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots, saying, “I didn’t start it. I
stopped it . . . I found out that some people were going to try an attempt
on Castro’s life and I turned it off.” Frank Mankiewicz said Bobby “told
me that there was some crazy CIA plan at one time for sending some
Cubans in to get Castro which he called off.”27
On March 4, 1967, when Bobby met Helms for lunch, he was prob-
ably glad that the major newspapers and TV networks had not yet fol-
lowed up on Anderson’s sensational column—whether due to pressure
on the media from Helms and the CIA, or because Anderson’s story was
drowned out by news from New Orleans about Garrison. At their meet-
ing, Bobby and Helms probably discussed what Helms had told—or was
going to tell—LBJ about the CIA-Mafia plots, the 1963 coup plan with
Almeida, and the current status of Almeida and his family.28
As for what Helms would tell LBJ about the CIA-Mafia plots,
it appears that LBJ had learned very little about them at that point.
However, Anderson’s column would soon change that. If LBJ asked,
Helms would at least have to give the president the same information
LBJ could learn from J. Edgar Hoover. That would explain why, on the
day of Bobby’s lunch meeting with Helms, Bobby had his secretary call
Hoover’s office and ask for a copy of the FBI’s May 7, 1962, memo about
the CIA-Mafia plots.
Though this lunch is the only clearly documented meeting between
Bobby and Helms after Anderson’s first column, Bobby likely had fur-
ther contact with Helms or one of his men, especially after Anderson’s
next column about the matter and LBJ’s request that Helms give him
a full report about the 1963 CIA-Mafia plots. Because the press was
still speculating that Bobby might run for president the following year,
Helms was in a delicate position: He couldn’t offend Bobby, or else
Helms might not be kept on as Director if Bobby became president—yet
as LBJ’s CIA Director, Helms couldn’t appear to be too close to Bobby.
Their subsequent contact on the matter was probably handled through
420
LEGACY OF SECRECY
Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans whom Bobby
still saw socially. FitzGerald knew the secrets as well as Helms did,
including those Helms still withheld from Bobby.
Once Richard Helms returned to CIA headquarters after his meeting
with Bobby, he no doubt discussed the situation with FitzGerald. They
both had much to lose if their unauthorized continuation of the CIA-
Mafia plots in 1963 became known to LBJ or was exposed in the press.
Their careers were on the line, to say nothing of the possibility of being
dragged into Garrison’s investigation.
Helms’s actions regarding the matter for the next two weeks are not
documented, but can be inferred from declassified files. In 2007, the CIA
admitted that in the 1960s, it tapped the phones of Washington colum-
nists Robert Allen and Paul Scott, suspected of “publishing news articles
based on, and frequently quoting, classified [CIA] materials.” A CIA
memo says those phone taps were “particularly productive in identify-
ing contacts of the newsmen . . . and many of their sources of informa-
tion.” Also disclosed in 2007 was that a few months before Watergate,
Richard Helms himself had the CIA conduct covert surveillance of Jack
Anderson and his assistants, including a young Brit Hume (now with
Fox News), in order to find out who was leaking to them. The CIA
admits the surveillance Helms ordered was “to determine Anderson’s
sources [of] highly classified Agency information appearing in his syn-
dicated columns.”29
Helms would have wanted to know who was leaking the CIA-Mafia
plot information to Jack Anderson, and what other relevant information
Anderson possessed that had not yet been published. As we’ll detail
shortly, the CIA was able to discover that Anderson and Pearson had
additional sensitive information about the CIA-Mafia plots they had not
yet printed. Given what the CIA did in similar circumstances, Helms
may have ordered the CIA to use phone taps or physical surveillance on
Anderson, which could have included FBI-style “black bag,” surrepti-
tious break-ins, which CIA veterans later used during Watergate. Helms
could have rationalized such actions as necessary for national security,
because the situation involved covert US operations against Cuba.
It’s important to keep in mind that Helms’s concerns about Anderson’s
column were occurring while the Garrison investigation in New Orleans
was still unfolding. Garrison’s inquiry was a major focus for Helms, and
many CIA documents show that the Agency followed every twist and
turn in Garrison’s case, running checks on each person whose name
surfaced not only in Garrison’s investigation, but also in news reports
or books about the case. This continued not just in 1967 and 1968, but for
years afterward, until at least 1974. In addition, Helms was having the
CIA make efforts to undermine or block Garrison, indirectly assist
the defense of Clay Shaw, and influence how the news media covered
the case. Amidst all that, Helms had to find the source of Anderson’s
leak, while trying to keep him and other journalists from publishing
more damaging information about the CIA.
The ultimate effect of Anderson’s column (and Garrison’s investiga-
tion) was a high level of cover-ups and concealment almost unmatched
since the immediate aftermath of JFK’s assassination. Three years after
JFK’s murder, many of the same officials were once more trying to qui-
etly investigate matters while simultaneously withholding information
from the public and one another. Bobby, Helms, LBJ, and Hoover were
again players in the drama, trying to discover things that Rosselli, Mar-
cello, and Trafficante already knew.
Chapter Thirty-four
Johnny Rosselli had not gotten what he wanted from Anderson’s first
column: for the CIA to make the FBI back off on his immigration case.
In addition, Marcello and Trafficante had not gotten the leverage they
needed to keep their ally Jimmy Hoffa from going to prison, nor had
there been any public backlash against Bobby Kennedy over Anderson’s
revelations. As a result, Rosselli got Anderson to publish another col-
umn, this time with one important element missing.
The next column by Anderson on Rosselli’s story would eliminate
any reference to the “underworld,” meaning the Mafia. Unlike when
Rosselli had first leaked his story to Anderson back in January 1968, the
Garrison investigation was now grabbing headlines across the coun-
try, and New Orleans was filled with reporters from around the world.
While the Mafia angle had been needed in January to grab the attention
of high officials, now it could harm Marcello if Rosselli focused the
reporters’ attention on the Mafia, which had so far escaped blame in
JFK’s assassination.
While Drew Pearson was still traveling in South America with Earl
Warren, Jack Anderson submitted his follow-up column on March 6, to
run on March 7, the same day Jimmy Hoffa was scheduled to report to
prison. Unknown to Anderson, on March 6 his first column was finally
starting to have the impact Rosselli sought. On that date, LBJ’s Attorney
General, Ramsey Clark, received a detailed FBI report provocatively
titled “Central Intelligence Agency’s Intentions to Send Hoodlums to
Cuba to Assassinate Castro.”1
That memo was soon brought to LBJ’s attention, and in it the FBI
detailed much of what its top officials knew about the CIA-Mafia plots
involving Johnny Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Robert Maheu. The FBI
said that Bobby Kennedy had been made aware of the use of the mob-
sters “to obtain intelligence . . . in Cuba” in May 1961, and that Bobby
had learned of the operation’s assassination aspects in May 1962, at
which time he had “issued orders that [the] CIA should never again
take such steps without first checking with [him].” The FBI also noted
that William Harvey had met with Rosselli in June 1963, when Harvey
claimed he finally shut down the operation.2 (The FBI memo didn’t men-
tion the Bureau’s surveillance of Rosselli in Miami in the fall of 1963,
when he was working on the CIA-Mafia plots while meeting with David
Morales and Jack Ruby—indicating those sensitive files were already
being held separately from the main Rosselli FBI files.)
The FBI said that Rosselli had “used his prior connections with [the]
CIA to his best advantage.” According to the FBI, the CIA’s Director
of Security “admitted to us that Rosselli has [the] CIA in an unusually
vulnerable position and that [Rosselli] would have no qualms about
embarrassing [the] CIA if it served his own interests.” Essentially, the
CIA had taken the rare step of admitting to the FBI that Rosselli had the
Agency over a barrel.3
LBJ had been skeptical of the Anderson/Pearson story, but Hoover’s
report confirmed that the CIA had indeed plotted extensively with Ros-
selli and the Mafia to kill Castro. This knowledge caused LBJ to take
the whole matter much more seriously, and he would soon demand a
full report from Richard Helms and tell the FBI to interview William
Morgan. The resulting reports, coupled with the next day’s Anderson
column, would have a major impact on what LBJ believed about JFK’s
assassination—not just at the time, but for years to come, until his own
death.4
The
Washington Post
ran Anderson’s new revelations on March 7, 1967,
even though they were tacked on to the end of a much longer story about
Congressional corruption, where they would have been easy to cut. The
column’s main headline was about the unrelated Congressional story,
but near the end was a subhead, “Castro Counterplot,” that signaled
the start of four short paragraphs updating the March 3, 1967, story.
Anderson wrote that the publicity surrounding Garrison’s investigation
“has focused attention in Washington on a reported CIA plan in 1963
to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro, which, according to some sources,