Authors: Lamar Waldron
on social occasions,” but Marcello’s reputation was such that Garrison
seemed privately torn over taking on the Mafia boss. The same week that
Garrison talked about indicting Marcello, Garrison did arraign former
low-level Marcello attorney Dean Andrews on perjury charges. How-
ever, on the same day, Garrison was successful in having the grand jury
indict Clay Shaw for conspiring to murder JFK, taking his investigation
permanently off course.22
While Garrison focused futilely on Clay Shaw, Shaw’s former co-
worker Alberto Fowler had a hand in torpedoing crucial parts of Gar-
rison’s investigation. Richard Billings’s notes say that in early March
1967, Fowler claimed he was unable to convince Silvia Odio, or her
sister Annie Odio, to cooperate with Garrison. Many years later, one of
Fowler’s associates would be identified as one of the two men who had
visited Odio with Lee Oswald. Similarly, only after one of Fowler’s men
had located and interviewed Eladio del Valle, and after del Valle was
brutally murdered, did Garrison learn that del Valle was “tied up with
Santo Trafficante.” Garrison quit using Fowler’s associate at that point,
but by that time Garrison had lost his only link between Trafficante and
JFK’s murder—and Trafficante’s name would not be associated publicly
with JFK’s assassination until eight years later.23
Johnny Rosselli asked Ed Morgan to talk to Drew Pearson in mid-March,
after Pearson had returned from South America. Morgan told Pearson
he had seen Rosselli in Las Vegas, and that Rosselli had been “most
indignant” about the stories Jack Anderson had written. Pearson wrote
in his diary that Morgan told him Rosselli “will not cooperate in advanc-
ing the story any further.” By that time, Rosselli had relayed two stories
that Anderson had published and was content to let the situation play
out quietly in Washington’s corridors of power. Hoffa had already gone
to prison, and while Rosselli had no official deal to avoid prosecution,
the FBI was no longer actively pressuring him about the immigration
matter. Rosselli’s feigned outrage—that a journalist had actually run a
story he’d been given—seems designed to make Pearson feel he wasn’t
being used, when he really was. (Rosselli would later leak more infor-
mation to Anderson, further proof that Rosselli liked what Anderson
had done.)24
Pearson also wrote in his diary that he originally thought Anderson’s
columns were “a poor story . . . and violated a confidence. . . . Finally,
it reflected on Bobby Kennedy without actually pinning the goods on
him.” Author Max Holland points out that Pearson thought “the
Wash-
ington Post
and
New York Post
were right not to run the [first] column.”25
But Rosselli’s fake indignation, coupled with others’ reactions to the
story, apparently made Pearson believe it was worth pursuing.
On March 13, 1967, Drew Pearson and Earl Warren met with LBJ at
the White House. Before meeting with Pearson, LBJ met privately for
forty minutes with only Earl Warren and LBJ’s liaison to the FBI. A few
days later, Pearson agreed to fund an almost two-week investigative trip
to New Orleans, for Jack Anderson to meet with Jim Garrison. Clearly,
Pearson wasn’t upset with Anderson for running the Rosselli story and
wanted to pursue it further. Now that Rosselli was no longer talking,
Garrison seemed like the next best source.26
Four days after meeting with Pearson and Warren, LBJ had one of his
aides tell FBI official Clyde Tolson that the FBI should “try to interview”
Rosselli’s attorney, Ed Morgan. Tolson protested, but LBJ insisted, so
the FBI complied.27
430
LEGACY OF SECRECY
The FBI’s interview with Ed Morgan on March 21, 1967, provides an
almost unfiltered version of Rosselli’s tale, and is as close as we can get
to hearing it from Rosselli himself. Some of its points were not in Jack
Anderson’s articles, but were heard by officials like President Johnson
and had an impact on their later beliefs and actions. Rosselli’s tale is the
masterful spin job one would expect from a longtime force in Las Vegas
and Hollywood, combining facts with fantasy designed to appeal to
the intended audience (in this case, J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, and worried
CIA officials like Helms). Morgan made a convincing mouthpiece for
the tale because he and Anderson probably believed Rosselli. Mounting
confirmation that the CIA really had plotted with the Mafia would also
suggest to officials that Rosselli might be right about Castro’s having
killed JFK.
It’s clear from reading Morgan’s story, as taken down by the FBI
agents, that one of Rosselli’s goals was to conflate the CIA-Mafia plots
with the JFK-Almeida coup plan. That conflation can be seen in Ander-
son’s columns, especially the second one, which cited 1963 as the date
of the plot to kill Castro, and ascribed control of it to Bobby Kennedy.
One sign that Rosselli succeeded in achieving this goal is the fact that
Morgan’s FBI interview, and memos about LBJ’s reaction to Rosselli’s
story, are in a massive, 318-page FBI file at the National Archives that
contains much of the FBI’s information about Commander Almeida.28
Soon after Morgan’s FBI interview began, he said his goal in talking
to the agents was to get “complete immunity” for his clients from “some
competent authority.” Morgan claimed that such immunity was needed
to keep some DA like “Garrison of New Orleans” from prosecuting his
clients for trying to kill Fidel, a very unlikely scenario. Morgan’s real
goal was to try to prevent the FBI from using the immigration charges
against Rosselli.29
To help hide the fact that the whole story was a ruse to acquire immu-
nity for Rosselli, Morgan stressed to the FBI that he “was employed by
more than one of those involved.” That statement was technically true,
since Morgan had earlier represented Robert Maheu and Jimmy Hoffa,
in addition to Rosselli. However, in pushing the story to the FBI, Morgan
was acting primarily on Rosselli’s behalf.30
Morgan tried to convince the FBI that his clients’ actions were noble
by claiming that they were “substantial citizens, people who loved their
country and had a high regard for the then President [Kennedy].” He
stressed their “high ethical standard,” and the fact that they had been
“patriotically motivated” in helping the US against Castro, and were
coming forward now only because their “conscience bothered” them.
This was the same phony image Rosselli would later present when tes-
tifying to Congress.
In a revealing passage, Morgan got close to the truth when he said,
“One client, when hearing the statement that Lee Harvey Oswald was
the sole assassin of President Kennedy, ‘laughs with tears in his eyes
and shakes his head in apparent disagreement.’” Johnny Rosselli may
well have laughed at JFK’s murder, but not for the reasons Morgan
thought.31
To conflate the CIA-Mafia plots with the real coup plan from 1963,
and to explain how his clients could have found out that Castro had
retaliated against JFK, Morgan told the FBI his clients had been
. . . called upon by a Governmental agency to assist in a project which
was said to have the highest Governmental approval. The project
had as its purpose the assassination of Fidel Castro. . . . Elaborate
plans involving many people were made. These plans included the
infiltration of the Cuban government and the placing of informants
in key posts within Cuba.32
Rosselli knew that having Morgan mention the “infiltration of the
Cuban government” would set off alarm bells with the high US officials
who knew about Almeida. In addition, the “informants . . . within Cuba”
could explain how Morgan’s clients learned about Fidel’s retaliatory hit
teams. The rest of Morgan’s story was a clearer version of the account
related in Anderson’s columns.
The well-connected Morgan was aware of Hoover’s insatiable thirst
for inside information, so he suggested the possibility that the FBI could
learn much more if it would give his clients “complete immunity.” Mor-
gan also slammed the CIA, saying that “it was inconceivable to him that
an agency of the Government . . . has not [made] this most important
data available to the Warren Commission.”33
Morgan conveyed the information Rosselli wanted him to, while
refusing to give up the mobster’s name to the FBI. The FBI wasted no
time in getting a summary of Morgan’s interview to President Johnson
and Attorney General Clark, setting off a chain of events that would
echo into the next decade and beyond—and trigger yet another round
of cover-ups by Richard Helms.
Chapter Thirty-five
President Lyndon Johnson received the results of the FBI’s interview
with Rosselli’s attorney, Ed Morgan, on March 22, 1967. That evening,
LBJ demanded a full explanation from CIA Director Richard Helms, but
he didn’t get one; instead, Helms gave an incomplete, often misleading
account to the president who had appointed him.
Helms did with LBJ what he had done with other high-ranking offi-
cials, only more carefully and on a larger scale. Declassified files and
Congressional testimony show that Helms had withheld information
from, and lied to, a succession of officials about his unauthorized Castro
assassination plots: President Kennedy, Attorney General Bobby Ken-
nedy, then–CIA Director John McCone, the Warren Commission, and
Secretary of State Dean Rusk. LBJ would fare no better, though Helms
went to greater lengths to cover himself this time, withholding informa-
tion from CIA investigators and even having internal CIA memos and
testimony destroyed.
The limited, incomplete story Helms would allow the CIA’s Inspec-
tor General to generate about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro would
become the object of presidential fascination and Congressional inves-
tigations, and large parts of it would remain beyond the public’s reach
for decades. Only in the 1990s would the almost uncensored report
finally become available, and only later would files be declassified
that showed just how much crucial information Helms had withheld
from LBJ.1
That President Johnson asked Helms for the report is ironic, because
LBJ was suspicious of the CIA—and not just for withholding information
about the plots to kill Castro. According to a memo from a high-ranking
FBI official, based on talks with top LBJ aide Marvin Watson, Presi-
dent Johnson “was now convinced that there was a plot in connection
with the assassination [of JFK]. Watson stated the President felt that [the]
CIA had had something to do with this plot.” Perhaps Helms sensed
LBJ’s suspicion, or was told about it, resulting in Helms’s decision to
withhold crucial information.2
LBJ’s worry that the “CIA had something to do with” JFK’s assassina-
tion did not last long, and would apparently be dispelled by the incom-
plete report Helms made sure was generated. But President Johnson still
harbored those doubts on the evening of March 22, when he met with
Richard Helms at the White House. It was not the type of folksy chat LBJ
sometimes utilized to get what he wanted. According to Helms’s biogra-
pher, Thomas Powers, President Johnson did not ask for the report “idly
or in passing.” Instead, LBJ “asked directly, formally, and explicitly, in a
tone and manner which did not [foresee] evasion,” making it clear that
he expected “an honest answer.” 3 For good measure, LBJ also wanted
Helms to address any CIA involvement in the assassinations of Vietnam
leader Diem, in 1963, and Dominican dictator Trujillo, in 1961.
LBJ’s formal request was one of two overriding factors that dictated
the form of Helms’s resulting report. First, LBJ’s request would have
to be referred to the CIA’s Inspector General, Jack Earman, who had
given Helms such a hard time in the summer of 1963 about the CIA’s
MKULTRA mind-control program. Second, how much LBJ told Helms
about the information he had received from the FBI about the CIA-Mafia
plots is not clear. While the CIA appears to have received copies of the
FBI memos that went to LBJ and the attorney general, Helms didn’t
know what additional information J. Edgar Hoover might have shared
privately with his friend LBJ. Helms was aware of earlier memos the
CIA had provided to the FBI about the plots, after the FBI discovered
parts of the plots in 1961 and 1962.
Richard Helms’s report would have to account for everything he knew
the FBI had, plus any additional information it might have uncovered
without telling the CIA. At the same time, Helms would have to avoid
detailing the most sensitive parts of his unauthorized Castro assassina-
tion plots. He would also have to make sure the report didn’t reveal
how Rosselli and other Mafia bosses had infiltrated and compromised