Flawed Patriot Read online

  Robert Blakey, in The Plot to Kill the President, treats Becker harshly: “We found that Becker, a former public relations man for the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, had been involved in shady transactions … [which] helped explain Becker’s presence at [the September 1962] meeting with Marcello…. We were able to obtain substantial corroboration for Becker’s presence in New Orleans … to discuss a promotional scheme with Marcello.”7 Blakey’s source was also Ed Reid.

  “I GOT SHOCKED!”

  Gus Russo has ruled out Mafia responsibility for, or complicity in, the assassination of JFK primarily based on evidence taken from FBI wiretaps on members of the Mob.

  Johnny Rosselli was awakened at the Desert Inn [a legendary hostelry in Twenty-Nine Palms, California] by … an old friend named Jonie Tapps…. John thought he was dreaming. “I didn’t believe it at first … because I was in deep sleep.”

  When he turned on the radio, “I got shocked!” Rosselli told Congress thirteen years later, making a mighty effort to censor his language. I said, “Gosh Almighty, those Communists…. You know that was the first thing that crossed my mind because a few months before, Castro had made [a threat] in the newspapers, and it sounded just like he was threatening the establishment here.”

  Johnny had expounded on his theory three weeks [after the assassination] with fellow-hood Jimmy Fratianno…. [They] lamented that the press was openly speculating [that the Mafia] was responsible for the hit. “You know, Johnny,” Fratianno said, “the more of this bullshit I read, the more I’m convinced that we’re scapegoats for every unsolved crime committed in this country! What’s this mob the papers are always talking about…. It’s against the fucking rules to kill a cop, so now we’re going to kill a president?”

  Throughout the country, the FBI huddled around their illegal surveillance apparatus, trying to learn if Organized Crime had finally gotten even with the hated Robert Kennedy. What they consistently heard convinced them that the country’s underworld would never even contemplate such an action.

  In Buffalo, local boss Stefanno Magaddino lamented, “It’s a shame we’ve been embarrassed before the whole world by allowing the president to be killed in our own territory.” He added that Kennedy was one of the greatest presidents and, as noted by the eavesdroppers, “blames the assassination on his brother, Robert Kennedy.” …

  The Giancanas were glued to their TV set. His daughter remembered [Sam] saying in 1960, “Some day Jack will get his, but I will have nothing to do with it.”

  Three days later, after the pro-Castro Oswald was charged with the murder, [one of Sam’s henchmen] commented, “This twenty-four year-old kid was an anarchist. He was a Marxist Communist.” To which [Sam] replied, “He was a marksman who knew how to shoot.”

  Based on all their wiretaps the FBI came to the firm conclusion that the Mafia was indeed innocent of the crime of murdering JFK.8 Of course, the mobsters, aware of the Bureau’s wall-to-wall coverage of their activities, might have developed into world-class actors, capable of a huge deception operation, but that’s not a question for examination here. In light of Russo’s persistent tracking, it does seem highly doubtful that the Mafia played any role in the killing of John F. Kennedy.

  CASE OFFICER–AGENT: THE CONTROL FACTOR

  That said, since we want to examine every possible link, if Rosselli indeed was active in a plot to kill the president, or knew, during the spring of 1963, that the Mob was intent on assassinating Jack Kennedy, would he have told Harvey? Did Rosselli recruit Harvey as an accessory before the fact, before Harvey went to Rome?

  Did Rosselli reverse the balance of their relationship in late 1962, after Bill lost the Cuban portfolio, and then get Harvey to contact one or more European criminal elements on behalf of the Mafia? The European and American underworlds knew each other from Havana and from drug smuggling, but Bill could have provided a very useful, discreet, and authoritative communications link in delicate matters of mutual interest. Harvey had that very useful mobility, at least until he went to Rome. Perhaps he traveled far and wide, not just on the CIA’s behalf.

  Did Rosselli blackmail Harvey in later years? Could the mafioso’s hold over Harvey have been Harvey’s knowledge of the Kennedy assassination, which Harvey did not fully report to his superiors?

  It is worth noting that Harvey, in his testimony to the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, which was otherwise blunt and to the point, never gave the slightest indication that he knew anything explosive about Jack Kennedy’s death. He and Rosselli had discussed their testimony at some length in advance. Again, Harvey later gruffly and enigmatically commented that the committee simply didn’t ask the right questions.

  Was this complex of possibilities the reason Harvey was still so very cautious about personal and family safety after he retired to Indianapolis?

  WISPS

  Would the wisps indicating that Harvey was involved with Rosselli beyond the limits of CIA practice have been sufficient cause to indict Harvey as a conspirator in the murder of John F. Kennedy, if they had been known in 1963 or in 1974? The evidence seems to me insufficient. Yet, why did the CIA tell CG Harvey that Agency files on Bill would absolutely not be accessible until 2063? Why that particular year, one hundred years after the JFK assassination and Harvey’s transfer to Rome? It seems as if the Agency had something to hide that would lose its effective half-life a century after the facts.

  Also, what lies behind this thought-provoking statement in the Church Committee report?

  Harvey kept the [Castro] assassination plot “pretty much in his back pocket,” Helms said. “There was a fairly detailed discussion between myself and Helms as to whether or not McCone should at that time be briefed concerning this,” Harvey related. “For a variety of reasons which were tossed back and forth, we agreed that it was not necessary or advisable to brief him at that time. It appeared to be … a very real possibility of this government being blackmailed either by [anti-Castro] Cubans for political purposes, or by figures in organized crime for their own self-protection or aggrandizement, which as it turned out did not happen, but at the time was a very pregnant possibility.

  Helms explained that, “Mr. McCone was relatively new to the Agency and I guess I must have thought to myself, well this is going to look peculiar to him. It was a Mafia connection … and this was, you know, not a very savory operation.”9

  In his copy of the report, Harvey scrawled the following cryptic note: “When McCone was in Rome, long after he was ‘officially in writing’ ordered, no mention or hint of subject [presumably of assassination] came up in my many hours of discussion with him.”10 McCone might have flaunted his secrecy pledge but assuredly would have done so only if he did not suspect Harvey had been involved in the assassination.

  CONSIDERATIONS

  It’s understandable that Harvey’s name surfaced in the JFK investigations. Harvey had that gun-slinging reputation; he scorned his higher-ups; he had deep personal reason to dislike Bobby Kennedy; and as Carlos Marcello is alleged to have said, Bobby could not be killed until Jack was out of the way. Additionally, Harvey came from the darkest, most impenetrable, and therefore, most suspicious byways in the tortuous labyrinth that was the Agency. He was known for his vest-pocket operations. More to the point, he had that close connection with Rosselli. And he had been in charge of—no, had actually been—ZRRIFLE, which was specifically concerned with the assassination of political leaders.

  Those who are suspicious point to ZRRIFLE’s ultrasecrecy and say, in effect, “If those guys could keep their own boss, McCone, in the dark, it is certainly possible CIA officers were involved in the JFK assassination.”

  One of the key questions here is motive. Did Harvey so dislike the Kennedys that he abandoned his spectrum of training and experience, his lawyer’s faith in the Constitution and in government, to engage in a truly horrendous act, in concert with professional criminals? If so, does this imply that Bill’s mental balance had shifted? In the spring of 1963, when one has to ass
ume that any Mafia plot would have slipped into gear, did Harvey, in his perhaps-delusional, overwrought, drinking state, give Rosselli a useful handle over himself?

  Harvey was back in the United States after July 1, 1963, the effective date of his transfer to Rome, only for one or more routine consultations, until he was recalled for good in April 1966. If Harvey was truly suspect, the CIA almost surely would have hauled him back from Rome, perhaps in early 1964, for interrogation and for a polygraph examination conducted by the Office of Security. If Harvey had been fluttered as part of the internal JFK investigation, the CIA would understandably be reluctant to release that fact, much less the result.

  It must be added, parenthetically, that, early on, the CIA’s side of the JFK investigation was handled by Jim Angleton. Evidence suggests that Angleton and Harvey were in close and friendly touch just before Bill’s death, which might not have been the case if Angleton had suspected Harvey of connivance in the murder of the president.

  Would Bill’s very patriotism, when confused by boozy vapors, have led him to complicity in the assassination? Did he believe that JFK was a menace to the nation? Could Harvey have disregarded his oath of allegiance to the Constitution sufficiently to take active part in such a plot?

  If Harvey had favored the elimination of any Kennedy, his candidate would have been Bobby, but I have never heard even a whisper that he was involved in that murder.

  HARVEY AND GUILT

  Harvey disliked Bobby Kennedy intensely. In 1962 he felt strongly that the brothers were conducting a personal and very unprofessional vendetta against Castro. Harvey disagreed with but did not dislike Jack and may even have respected him slightly, in a sort of skewed, avuncular way. CG contended, years later, that Jack liked and admired Harvey. But had Harvey’s judgment become so skewed over the years of boozing that he allowed himself to, in effect, become judge, jury and, by default, witness to the execution?

  At least one operational point weighs against any direct Harvey involvement in the assassination, were DRE involved. From way back in the Berlin days, when BOB had had to spend so much time and manpower cleaning up blatant, ineffective, cowboy-style operations—which destroyed lives unnecessarily, or for minimal gain, in Harvey’s eyes—Bill was always skeptical about political and psychological operations. That skepticism was borne out in the Bay of Pigs, in which two former Berlin PP officers played key roles. The DRE was supported by the Agency’s PP wing.

  During the Task Force W days, Harvey would have been appalled at the Cubans’ flouting of tight security. Would he have simply written off hints of an assassination plot as more wild talk from Miami’s Little Havana? Would Harvey have reported what he heard to Dick Helms? If Helms and company were actually involved, would Bill have kept silent? The answer to this last question is, yes, because of his own patriotism and his ingrained loyalty to the Agency.

  If he knew that Dave Phillips and others were involved in an assassination plot, he would have been a dangerous liability to some persons in the CIA—someone to be handled with kid gloves since he could not be terminated with extreme prejudice. Inside knowledge of the assassination could explain Harvey’s extraordinary security measures in Indianapolis: the watchful eye over Sally, the guns stashed all over the house, the belief that “the KGB was out to get him.” Agency suspicion that he might have something in his files that was very embarrassing to the CIA might, too, explain the burglarizing of his houses in Chevy Chase and, later, after his death, in Indianapolis.

  If he knew anything about the events of November 22, he never told anyone, save, maybe, CG.

  AFTERMATH

  The CIA conducted its own internal investigation of Agency involvement with the assassination in late 1963 and early 1964. As far as I know, the results of that scrutiny have never been released. It may be assumed that the investigation at some point looked into Harvey.

  If the CIA’s scrutiny established that Bill was knowledgeable of some aspects of JFK’s death, Harvey, an increasingly loose cannon, hardly would have been allowed to remain in Rome for any length of time. Rather he would have been transferred back to the United States and tucked away somewhere, out of sight, but still employed, and thus under control, so that he could be dried out and then thoroughly interrogated. He might not have been prosecuted because a court case would have blown too many uncomfortable secrets wide open. Rather, after a certain period of time, he might well have been allowed to retire, quietly and having signed a severely binding secrecy agreement, hardly ever again to be mentioned by anyone in the CIA hierarchy. In fact, something fairly close to this script did happen, except Harvey stayed on in Rome for more than two years after the assassination.

  All of the Agency alumni I have talked with about the matter emphatically exclude any possibility that Bill was complicit, even passively, in the JFK assassination. Several, when I said I was going to examine Bill’s entire life, obliquely urged me to deal only with the times when Bill was at his peak. They didn’t warn me off; their unspoken concern was for what Bill might have done in the depths of his drinking. Still, they did not, could not, believe their Bill was involved in one of America’s most unsettling crimes. I sympathized then with their feelings, and I share them now. But the wisps remain, floating loosely in air.

  Some speculation is permissible. A heavy, consistent drinker can become contemptuous of the rule of law and of the codes by which others live. Indeed, one revels in the sense of liberation one feels, with the first couple of drinks of the day, from the dictates of conformist, mundane society.

  Only in 1966, after Bill had made such a shambles of his posting to Rome, did the CIA send him into a form of alcohol rehab—in his case, periodic visits to a cleared psychiatrist or counselor. Bill remarked to friends that he was not impressed by the treatment, and indeed, it didn’t get him off the booze at the time.

  A couple of other tangential matters: When I started my inquiries, Sally Harvey was wholly cooperative. A year or so later, she sent me a formal letter saying, “the family” wished me well in my endeavors but had decided to cease cooperation because public discussion of Bill’s life would not be what he or CG wanted. Sally’s statement runs directly counter to the twenty-plus page letter handwritten by CG Harvey in 1983 that gave me abundant leads and every encouragement to write a book that, as originally envisioned, would have been a rebuttal to David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors. I must conclude that Sally’s flip-flop came as a result of pressure from Jim Harvey, the keeper of some papers and at least one artifact from his father and stepmother’s home in Indianapolis, who, perhaps not surprisingly, prefers reserve to open discussion of his father. My several attempts to secure Jim Harvey’s cooperation proved fruitless.

  Until, or if ever, documentary evidence is available, there can be only conjecture. A Harvey connection to the assassination cannot be proved or disproved. It’s like an Etch-A-Sketch—any fanciful picture therein can be erased with a vigorous shake. Or, if you prefer your imagery more classic, it’s like trying to find your way out of a labyrinthine cave, following the string you have played out behind you, only to find that the cord crosses itself and goes in circles and knots, leaving you hopelessly lost.

  THE FRENCH CONNECTION

  Although neither the Blakey nor the Lesar theories suppose that French or French-Corsican gangsters were involved in the JFK killing, others suggest that they were and that Harvey may have been involved with them.

  In 1960, immediately after taking over Division D, Harvey, with his unlimited, unchallenged travel warrant, made one or more trips to Europe. He may even have traveled abroad as late as 1962. He was allegedly interested in locating and perhaps assessing professional criminals who might help obtain cryptographic materials. With his FBI background, Harvey could talk fraternally with European cops, including French officers who became major figures in the Europe-American heroin trade. Maybe, from that pool of candidates, he was able to draw a potential assassin for the CIA’s wet affairs. Bill might not have met any
criminals personally, but he was certainly privy to information on European drug gangs. It may be assumed that Arnold S., the Division D European case officer based in Luxembourg, arranged for Harvey’s access to European police officials.

  According to the one set of notes available, Harvey’s inquiries during his trip to Europe seemed to center on Trieste. The highly-sensitive, amended, handwritten draft project outline transcribed in chapter 8 shows clearly that ZRRIFLE was intended to be carried out by non-American criminal elements. Note, again, these two excerpts from Bill’s stipulations for ZRRIFLE:

  Exclude organized criminals, e.g. Sicilians, criminals, those w/ record of arrests, those w/ instability of purpose as criminals.

  But then:

  … organization criminals, those with record of arrests, those who have engaged in several types of crime. Corsicans recommended. Sicilians could lead to Mafia.

  And:

  Former resistance personnel a possibility. Period of testing, surveillance, etc. for each selection.

  Use nobody [as a case officer] who has never dealt w/ criminals; otherwise will not be aware of pitfalls or consider factors such as freedom to travel, wanted lists, etc.

  Is it possible that Harvey, probably posing as something other than a CIA officer, might have met some European criminal, assessed and perhaps recruited him, perhaps using the interpretive services of a trusted intermediary? Did Harvey meet QJWIN, with or without his handler, in Europe in the winter of 1960–61 to assess him for ZRRIFLE, prior to the planned attempt on Lumumba and thus gain what might have been his first direct insight into the European criminal milieu?