Flawed Patriot Page 25

  If the Mafia plotted the assassination, Rosselli might well have confided the fact in Harvey. The question is, if Rosselli told Harvey, when did he do so: before November 22, 1963, or well after, perhaps in 1967, when he talked to Jack Anderson, a well-known Washington columnist? And, if Rosselli told Harvey, why did he do so? And, of course, was there a Mafia plot to kill John F. Kennedy at all?

  THEORY 2: CIA PLOT

  Theory 2, propounded by James Hiram Lesar, chatelaine of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C., and supported by others, excludes the Mafia as participant but implicates the CIA very, very deeply. Lesar’s theory is predicated on the assumption that restless Agency officers who had tasted political blood in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic and had suffered through the Bay of Pigs fiasco either plotted to murder the president or acquiesced in a plot devised by Cuban students in exile in Miami.

  The key figure in theory 2 is a legendary CIA political and psychological (PP) officer named David Atlee Phillips. Further, the theory involves the right-wing, anti-Castro Cuban students group, the DRE, and the manipulation and use of the hapless patsy, Oswald. It implicates high-level Agency officers who were involved in paramilitary operations against Cuba, specifically Dick Helms, Tom Karamessenes, Ted Shackley, a case officer named George Joannides, and Dave M., the paramilitary officer who was at the Florida Keys base with Rosselli. The Lesar theory is anchored in a single question: Who had the capability to assassinate JFK? His proffered answer is: only the military and the Agency.

  The Harvey connection in theory 2 is straightforward. Dave Phillips was a Harvey subordinate when he was in charge of CIA’s covert PP operations out of the Mexico City, which fell under Task Force W. Phillips was in close touch with JMWAVE, and Shackley, chief of JMWAVE, was especially close to Harvey. Phillips later was head of the Western Hemisphere Division of CIA’s Clandestine Services and was a founder of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), which to this day reveres his memory. When I talked to Shackley in 2001, he adamantly, even curtly, dismissed the possibility that he or the CIA had been in any way involved in the JFK assassination.

  Just to complicate the theorizing, there is a possibility that Santo Trafficante recruited DRE members to conceal Mafia involvement in the murder. But that would not change Harvey’s situation in the complex of relationships.

  GLEANINGS

  The biggest unresolved question in the still-simmering mystery is: What kind of role, if any, did Harvey play? Jim Lesar goes so far as to say that Harvey’s role is “one of the last remaining, unexplored lines of inquiry in the JFK assassination.”1 Some additional important questions are: Was Bill witting, before the fact, of a presumed Mafia or DRE plot? And, if so, did he report his knowledge to a CIA superior?

  It is possible that, while still in the United States and involved in Cuban affairs, i.e., before October 27, 1962, more than a year before the assassination, Bill might well have heard that a group of Cuban students in Miami was making threatening noises about Kennedy. If so, he probably would have dismissed the reports: the Miami Cubans were volatile and given to fanciful scenarios of revenge for their plight. They were not to be taken too seriously, at least not then and not by foreign intelligence (FI) officers.

  If, indeed, the Mafia was scheming to take out the president, Harvey might have had some advance indication from Rosselli in spring or early summer of 1963. Harvey might even have briefed the Sicilian Mafia on behalf of its American nephews after he settled into his new post in Rome.

  If he had advance information on either possibility, Bill would have been duty bound to report it to Dick Helms personally. Let’s speculate that he did tell Helms that a plot was festering but that Helms did not give the tale much credence. Would Helms, then head of the Clandestine Services, but not yet director of central intelligence (DCI), have sent Bill abroad? Probably not; it would be logical to assume that Helms would have wanted the explosive Harvey on a short leash, close to home. In fact, Harvey held a reasonably prestigious job in Rome for some time and only truly became an object of suspicion to CIA brass in 1968.

  Another important question: Would Harvey have borne the Kennedys so much animosity—because of their manipulation of the CIA and their treatment of him personally and of what he stood for—that he would have acquiesced in an assassination plot, if, indeed, it came to his attention? Harvey was a lawyer and a patriot, and he took his oath seriously. The real question in this case might be, did drink so impair Bill’s judgment that he would have become a silent accomplice before the fact, had he known what was in train?

  POSSIBLE LINKS

  The unlovely Bill Harvey fitted some people’s need for a heavy, a suspect, but no hard evidence links Harvey to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or years later, to the killing of Kennedy’s brother, Robert. That said, here is a summary of the theoretical links between Harvey and the JFK assassination:

  a) We will shortly touch on the role of JMWAVE case officer George Joannides and the DRE. The DRE were in convulsed touch with Oswald. A tenacious writer continues investigations into this possible linkage. As this is written, that reporter, Jefferson Morley, who has been mining this lode for years, is proceeding in federal court in an attempt to force more documents out of the Agency. Harvey was two or three levels above Joannides in 1963 and would have known about DRE.

  b) Harvey, as head of Task Force W, was overlord to elements of CIA Mexico City, which had Oswald and the Soviet and Cuban embassies under surveillance. Investigators later proved that an individual entering the Soviet embassy whom CIA identified as Oswald was, in fact, a French or Belgian criminal figure; despite this identification, some still feel the person caught on the surveillance tape was, indeed, Oswald. Does this confusion, or indeed, the possibility that CIA—and in effect Harvey—purposely misidentified the man, mean that Harvey was involved in the JFK assassination? It does not.

  c) Bill’s close personal connection with Rosselli, and his meetings with Rosselli in the spring of 1963, before Harvey’s reassignment to Rome, could be considered suspicious. As mentioned above, Rosselli may have told Harvey of the Mafia plot against John F. Kennedy during these meetings, if, indeed, there was such a conspiracy.

  d) Harvey was well aware of Santo Trafficante, a possible Castro double agent, and some of Trafficante’s operations. Harvey strenuously avoided meeting Trafficante. Shackley, the boss of JMWAVE in Miami, also took a very dour view of Trafficante and actually took measures to ensure that the CIA’s operations and Trafficante never collided. Still, because Harvey and Shackley knew Trafficante, theorists have speculated that they may have had ties through him to the assassination.

  e) Once in Rome, Harvey might have contacted European criminals and/or the Union Corse, the Sicilian Mafia (with whom he had loose liaison), and the mainland Italian Camorra, on behalf of Rosselli. Thus, though it has not been proven, Harvey may have acted as a line of communication between European and American plotters.

  THE RUSSO FACTOR

  Gus Russo, a leading authority on the Mafia, argues trenchantly in his book, The Outfit, that the Cosa Nostra was not in any way involved in the Kennedy assassination. In an e-mail discussing this analysis, which came as this book was in the final stages of preparation, Russo expands,

  I was all over organized crime for The Outfit and knew that the mob, especially Rosselli, had nothing to do with Oswald or Dallas….

  Over the years I have spoken with many who knew Rosselli, not to mention his sister and goddaughter, all of whom find it ridiculous that he would kill JFK, or anybody. Rosselli, a former bootlegger in Joe Kennedy’s Boston crew, stopped being a thug after the union fights in Hollywood in the thirties. After that he was a mob deal maker who never got his $1,000 suit wrinkled. He was never charged with a violent crime in his life. He went to prison in the forties for receiving kickbacks from the Hollywood studios for whom he had been controlling the unions, and late in life for a card cheating scam that he had only a ta
ngential connection with….

  The reader should know that Rosselli was an admirer of JFK and even went to Florida to participate, at age fifty-seven, in Mongoose raids and to help broker the Castro assassination plots during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, both free of charge; he felt it was his “patriotic duty” as he so testified and told friends (see both Rappleye’s book and my The Outfit, pp. 384–393 and 426–427).

  Lastly, even Rosselli’s biographers, who tried hard to get a Dallas headline from their book (Johnny knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Ruby, etc.), had to admit the tenuous links to Dallas: “These reports are fragmentary and inconclusive, falling short of proof that John Rosselli played a part in the Kennedy assassination.” (Rappleye, p. 248)2

  Russo, in a follow-up conversation, emphasized his conviction that the Mafia theory was based on shaky speculation, and that the mafiosi Russo had interviewed over the years scoffed at the possibility. Still, we must, even despite the expert view of Gus Russo, look at the possibility of a Cosa Nostra connection to the death of JFK.

  THE TIMES

  In the years of disabuse and anger stemming from the Vietnam War and, later, Watergate, people were prepared to believe anything about secret government. It didn’t take much of a stretch to think that the enigmatic Agency, and Rosselli and Harvey, might have plotted to kill John F. Kennedy—although that suspicion, oddly, did not extend to the murder of JFK’s brother, Robert.

  Jack Anderson, long after the fact, made emphatic statements about DCI John McCone’s visits to Robert Kennedy at his Hickory Hill residence on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, and the next day, to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Anderson said McCone stressed to both Kennedy and Johnson that, if the true story of the assassination came out, there was a real risk that World War III would start because Soviet Premier Khrushchev was irrational and might “press the button.” McCone was relaying an immediate suspicion that JFK’s death was not what it seemed to be and that the Soviet leader might seek to take advantage while the United States grieved.

  The how and why of the assassination had to be dealt with openly and honestly. LBJ opted to appoint a commission, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, that could be relied on to upset no applecarts. As a member of the commission, Allen Dulles would make sure that anything the Agency believed to be of a too-delicate nature was sidetracked. To skeptics, these very facts are sufficient to cast the CIA in the role of, at the least, accomplice to murder of the president.

  ROSSELLI AND THE MOB

  Recall that after Harvey officially “terminated” Rosselli’s contact with the CIA in Los Angeles in February 1963, while the Agency’s bounty on Castro’s head was intact, contact between the two continued, even flourished.

  There are the receipts in Bill’s financial accounting for his last official trip to Florida in April 1963. He and Rosselli stayed and/or ate at the Plantation Yacht Harbor Motel, Eden Roc, and Fontainebleau Hotels in Miami. Harvey paid for Rosselli’s room and took him out on a boat, twice, then sent him off to Chicago. On at least one occasion, the pair was joined by another, unidentified person, who could have been Johnny’s sister but likely was not; if it had been Edith, she probably would have been accompanied by her husband. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that the third person was Harold Meltzer, described, by the Church Committee in 1975, as “a resident of Los Angeles with a long criminal record.”

  A note about Meltzer surfaced in what little there was of Harvey’s ZRRIFLE files. What the ZRRIFLE memo did not say was that Meltzer was a longtime collaborator and sometime shooter for Rosselli. Did Harvey meet Meltzer? Why?

  Recall that Harvey picked Johnny up at Dulles Airport and that they dined, with CG Harvey present, the night of June 20, 1963, under the eyes of the FBI. Thereafter, Rosselli spent the night at the Harveys’ temporary accommodation, an occurrence Washington Metropolitan Police Inspector Joe Shimon found odd, “unless they were doing business,” because Johnny usually stayed at the Madison Hotel.

  As mentioned in chapter 9, it is possible that Harvey may have maintained casual contact with Rosselli while he was abroad from 1963 to 1966, although in a 1967 statement to a senior CIA official, Harvey stoutly maintained that he had not seen Rosselli since before he went to Italy in 1963.

  ROSSELLI, THE MAFIA, AND THE ASSASSINATION

  Rosselli occasionally traveled with the Rat Pack, which overlapped, through Peter Lawford, with the Kennedys. Yet if Rosselli had had to declare his politics, my guess is that he would have opted Republican.

  It may be conjectured that Johnny and his fellow mafiosi disliked the Kennedys for two reasons: their betrayal of the Mafia after it had supported JFK financially and with votes in the 1960 primary and general elections, and the personal hounding to which Rosselli and others were subjected by the FBI. Rosselli may have shared this dislike with Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, who had been forcibly exiled from the United States, and with Santo Trafficante, the Miami capo who had been a big shot in pre-Castro Havana.

  Trafficante was probably of two minds. On one hand, he wanted to be back in business in Havana, but this was not possible as long as Castro reigned. On the other, he may have been a principal agent for Castro’s intelligence service in Miami, keeping tabs on the exiles so that one day he might be more acceptable back in the Cuban capital. Whatever his allegiance, Trafficante may have disliked the Kennedys because, in addition to reneging on their obligations to the Mafia in general, they had—at the very least with the Bay of Pigs—interfered with the orderly running of his business in Cuba and then failed to oust or off Castro.

  Rosselli, as the Mafia’s roving ambassador, was often in Miami, and he knew and consorted with Trafficante before the time of Johnny’s Cuban operations.

  The first hint of Mafia involvement in the killing of JFK that I am aware of came from Ed Becker, who coauthored All American Mafioso. Becker reported that in his presence in September 1962 Carlos Marcello, the Mob capo in New Orleans, said that RFK “was going to be taken care of” but that first JFK would have to be eliminated.

  THE ROSSELLI CONNECTION

  The obvious hypothetical link between Harvey and the JFK assassination runs through Rosselli. Ed Becker, reminiscing in 2002:

  Everyone’s still talking about Johnny as a gentleman. Hell, he wasn’t a gentleman. When they were fighting [in the 1930s] over the offshore gambling out of Los Angeles, that was brutal … lot of killing, and Johnny was involved in it….

  Yeah, the FBI lost Johnny [during the critical days of the JFK assassination]. He stashed Judith Exner in a hotel on Pico Boulevard…. And he talked on the phone about going to Finland…. The Bureau lost him….

  Giancana, now he was nuts. He threatened to kill JFK….

  Rosselli was involved. But not your guy, Harvey…. Johnny would never have brought anyone like that into it….

  Of course, if Johnny Rosselli knew, Johnny would have told Bill, no question. After the fact, sure, they talked about it.

  The murder was committed by a guy who was in the scavenger business … Red Donergan.

  Questioned again in a phone conversation nearly two years later, Becker said he didn’t recognize the name of Donergan. It must also be said that I got the impression that Ed, who’s getting on in years, enjoys talking to someone who is receptive to his memories.3

  THE MAFIA AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

  Rappleye and Becker contend that Johnny Rosselli was in the picture, either shortly before the assassination, or more likely, shortly after. Professor Blakey speculates that Rosselli used his knowledge of the Mafia’s hand in the murder of JFK as a bargaining chip in his dealings with Bill Harvey at some undetermined date and again, years later, with Jack Anderson.

  Rappleye and Becker:

  Four years after the events in Dallas, [Rosselli] made the startling claim that he had inside knowledge of The Assassination. Over the following decade, he juggled his knowledge of The Assassination with his other great secr
et, the CIA-Mafia plots, paying out snippets of information….

  John Rosselli’s circumstantial ties to the Kennedy assassination extended beyond his various connections to Jack Ruby. He worked closely with Santo Trafficante, who made the firm prediction of Kennedy’s impending death.4

  Rappleye and Becker also delve into other possible connections between Rosselli and anti-Castro Cubans, including a Hollywood gossip columnist’s report: “What I heard about the Kennedy Assassination was that Johnny was the guy who got the team together to do the kill … that ‘the scenario was “fairly well-known” in the underworld but [the source] was reluctant to go into detail.’” Another report that the biographers uncovered places Rosselli in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and says he took the assassination weapon from the hands of a marksman—the second shooter—and was driven away from the infamous grassy knoll. Rappleye and Becker: “He knew what had happened in Dallas.”5

  Becker might not be an entirely credible source, however. For example, the conversation in which Marcello suggested the Kennedys would be “taken care of” took place in a Louisiana barbershop and was carried on primarily in Sicilian, a language Becker acknowledged he did not understand. It is highly possible that Becker, receiving the translated gist second- or third-hand, consciously or otherwise distorted what was actually said. A Becker associate at the time told Russo that Ed Reid might have been guilty of “using poetic license.” Reid, a former FBI agent who later became a private investigator, “had employed Becker on occasion. [The PI] conceded that Becker was ‘a controversial guy.’”6