Legacy of Secrecy Read Online Free Page A

resulted
    from the Director’s efforts to hide his own closeted life.
    While Senator John F. Kennedy and Bobby couldn’t prosecute Mafia
    bosses in 1958 and 1959, they could at least expose their criminal orga-
    nizations to public scrutiny. This was true even when a mob boss repeat-
    edly refused to answer questions by using his Fifth Amendment right
    against self-incrimination, as did Louisiana/Texas godfather Carlos
    Marcello. In a public session on March 24, 1959, Bobby posed dozens
    of incisive questions to Marcello, and when the crime boss declined
    to answer, Bobby’s interrogation clearly outlined Marcello’s criminal
    empire. This included Marcello’s extensive involvement in the heroin
    trade, something he shared with his close associate Santo Trafficante,
    the godfather of Tampa, who controlled much of Florida.
    The Kennedys had less success in getting Trafficante to appear, since
    he spent so much time visiting his Havana casinos. When Bobby Ken-
    nedy had the director of the Miami Crime Commission testify about
    Trafficante, Bobby noted in the hearing that there had been a mob hit
    in Tampa the previous day. Trafficante finally fled to Cuba in 1959, to
    avoid testifying about his role in the notorious barbershop murder of
    New York mob boss Albert Anastasia.
    Much to Bobby’s frustration, still another Mafia boss was able to
    evade testifying in 1959 because of his secret work for the CIA against
    new Cuban leader Fidel Castro.2 Unknown to Bobby Kennedy, this plot
    to assassinate Castro had been brokered for the CIA by Jimmy Hoffa,
    who used his arms sales to Castro and Mafia ties to his own advantage,
    as later documented by Congressional investigators. This 1959 plot
    wasn’t successful, and the following year the CIA took a fresh approach
    by avoiding Hoffa and working directly with a new set of mob bosses,
    including Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli (and eventually, Marcello).
    However, involved in both Hoffa’s Cuban arms sales and the original
    1959 Castro assassination plot was a small-time Dallas gangster and
    gunrunner named Jack Ruby.3
    During the 1959 Senate crime hearings, Bobby was never able to find
    a man using the alias of “Jack La Rue,” who was on the fringe of the
    first CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots while smuggling armaments
    to Cuba. Much evidence and testimony shows that Dallas nightclub
    owner Jack Ruby was involved in the same operations as “Jack La Rue.”
    Unbeknownst to Bobby in 1959 while he was fruitlessly looking for
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    LEGACY OF SECRECY
    the mysterious “Jack La Rue,” Jack Ruby was running guns to Cuba
    with La Rue’s associates while also being used by Marcello as a mes-
    senger to Trafficante. Despite their setbacks in tracking down “La Rue”
    and Trafficante, JFK and Bobby were more successful in getting testi-
    mony from Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and Teamster chief Jimmy
    Hoffa: Newsreel footage shows Bobby verbally sparring with each, with
    mutual contempt.
    JFK officially launched his presidential campaign in that same Sen-
    ate hearing room, before eventually winning the extremely close 1960
    election. While the media often focuses on possible mob support in West
    Virginia arranged by Joseph Kennedy, and the Chicago Mafia’s role
    in swinging that city to JFK (as if powerful Mayor Daley’s help didn’t
    matter), more Mafia support went to JFK’s opponent, Vice President
    Richard Nixon. According to a trusted Justice Department informant,
    in September 1960, “Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash
    which was going to Nixon” with the aid of Jimmy Hoffa. Marcello’s half
    million was to be matched by other Mafia bosses, including “the mob
    boys in . . . Florida,” like Trafficante, who were no doubt fearful of what
    a Kennedy presidency might mean for them.4
    Once JFK took office in 1961, he appointed his brother Bobby as Attor-
    ney General of the United States, and, with a prosecutor’s zeal, Bobby
    immediately made Carlos