331vas - The Jfk Assassination

The JFK Assassination Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) At the risk of wasting paper and ink on such bizarreness, I decided to follow-up my conspiracy-related article of issue #327 with another conspiracy-related article. My apologies to those who find this exceedingly silly. At the very least, perhaps you might find it entertaining to point fingers and call me a nut. Lord knows, I surely deserve it. What follows is a little piece I wrote for a dude I met in a bar in Taipei. He was one of these well-traveled Americans you sometimes meet while vacationing abroad, and between sips of an over-priced Long Island, I got his email address and promised to continue our scintillating conversation. While I was leaving, he said I should remember to ask him about the JFK assassination if I wanted to hear the "real scoop" on what happened. Never one to miss out on a history lesson, I sent him the following theory, but have thus far not heard back. Not wishing to waste a good theory, and bearing down on a submission deadline, I figured I'd inflict this on all of you. So without further ado, here's the JFK assassination in eight queasy acts.

Act 1: Pissing off the Mafia It's 1960. The Kennedy vs Nixon fight is on. Kennedy is easily the sunnier of the two candidates, and he's a bit of war hero to boot. However, he's got no foreign policy experience, and his father, Joe, was a Nazi sympathizer who used to run liquor during prohibition and who made millions swindling the stock market while, almost inconsequentially, playing a small role in the advent of the Depression. The election is gonna be close, and Joe decides to help his son out by reaching back to his old Chicago mob contacts to see if things can't be rigged just a wee bit (actually, this part is a story in itself and is likely more convoluted that I'm making it appear). Well, things are rigged just a wee bit, and John wins by the skin of his teeth. Now he owes the Chicago mob a favor. Instead of going easy on crime, however, he puts Bobby (RFK) up as attorney general, who quickly proves to be the most aggressive A.G. the country ever had when it comes to shutting down organized crime. The Chicago mob (Giancana) and it's affiliate, the Teamsters Union (Hoffa), is rightly pissed, and Joe's contacts tell him to talk to his sons and try to get them to listen to reason. Joe does talk to them but ends up getting into a shouting match with Bobby who isn't about to budge no matter what his father says (again, the story here is more complex, as prior to JFK's election as president, Joe does get Bobby to resign from a congressional committee which is going after organized crime, however, once JFK is elected president, the mafia-vote is no

longer needed). Joe storms away, unable to dissuade Bobby from his course, and he is soon to brought down by a stroke (1961), ending his influence both with the Mob/Mafia as well as with his sons.

Act 2: Pissing off the CIA & the Military Establishment After Castro overthrows Batista in Cuba, not only does the mob lose it's lucrative businesses in Havana, but the U.S. is faced w/ a communist dictatorship on its doorstep. The CIA comes up with several plans to assassinate Castro (Project Mongoose), in one case using a mafia hitman to do the actual deed (the CIA & mafia have a long-standing relationship dating back

to WW2, i.e. before the CIA was actually formed). JFK approves the general effort, however, several bungled attempts later, the CIA finally arm-twists JFK into the Bay of Pigs invasion (I'm not entirely clear on what led up to this). Giancana sees all of this as a genuine attempt on the part of JFK to repay his debt to the mob, however, the whole thing is bungled, as usual, and the ultimate bungle is that JFK refuses to lend air support when things go sour, allowing the whole thing to go down as a big mistake. Many Cuban ex-patriot freedom fighters who have been trained by the CIA end up rotting in Castro's jails as a result. Many will be confined for decades, some for the remainder of their lives. Not only is the mob-debt not repaid, but many folks in the CIA and in the military feel betrayed by Kennedy. Meanwhile, he's furious with them for putting him into the ridiculous position of launching a covert invasion. To compound the failure, Castro calls on the Soviets for military aid, leading to the cuban missile crisis, and while the public views Kennedy as a hero for the successful blockade of Cuba, the CIA (as well as some of the top brass in the military) views him as an idiot who could have averted the entire episode if only he'd listened to his advisors in the first place rather than strand the real heroes on the beaches of Cuba. Furthermore, they see the view the Kruschev-Kennedy deal (in October 1962 Kennedy and Kruschev made a deal that the Soviets would not supply Cuba with nukes, and in return, we'd

take our nukes out of Turkey AND that we'd take no action whatsoever against Cuba or the Castro regime) as nothing more than a stop-gap, and feel that Cuba will always remain a threat for as long as Castro remains in power. Kennedy's inability to squash his threat shows his own weakness as a President, and many in the military come to feel that he is too weak and morally undisciplined to be the leader of the free world. Of course, at this time, it was not known that the soviets had equipped their Cuban detachments with tactical (i.e. battlefield) nukes. If we had invaded, as the military brass unanimously wanted to do, the Sovs would have nuked our army while it was landing, and this would have led to a nuclear war between us and the USSR. It is somewhat of a miracle that a nuclear war didn't occur in 1963, but at that time, the military brass not only thought a military confrontation with the soviets was ultimately inevitable, but they also believed that a nuclear war would be survivable and that the nation would endure. Fortunately, almost miraculously, these things didn't happen. Things continued to deteriorate from there. While the CIA and military planners viewed Vietnam as the linchpin to the expansion of communism and Soviet influence in southeast asia, Kennedy wanted to disinvolve the United States from the war, essentially handing Kruschev the entire subcontinent without a fight. Furthermore, due to the widening ideological rift between the White House and the CIA, Kennedy was strongly considering the actual dissolution of the agency. Through their surveillance of contacts inside the US, the CIA soon figured this out, and top people at that agency began to get very angry and very nervous, not only for their own positions in the governmental hierarchy, but also for the country as a whole. To get some idea of the degree of ruthlessness of the CIA & military establishment, it's worth noting Operation Northwoods (abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNew s/jointchiefs_010501.html) a plan hatched to commit terrorism against domestic targets and make it look like the work of Castro in order to muster political support for an invasion. If they

were willing to kill random Americans in order to muster political support, what wouldn't they be willing to do to a president who's planning to dissolve the CIA and thereby cripple the country's intelligence apparatus?

Act 3: Bobby's Gambit In an effort to transition some of the CIA's functions to the White House, RFK decided to start an intelligence operation from his own office. This was called Project Freedom. Of course, he had JFK's support, who felt he could no longer trust the CIA. So Bobby began this operation which endeavored to put agents into Cuba via legal mechanisms. There were three purposes behind this: •

•

•

So that we could learn more about the mood of the people on the streets of Havana and whether or not they would support a revolution against Castro. So that our agents could conduct a campaign of sabotage to destroy pro-Castro assets prior to the revolution and/or a second Cuban invasion (there were plans to launch a second invasion from the Dominican Republic). So that, with some opportunity and a little luck, Castro might eventually be assassinated (they eventually co-opted a high official in Havana for this purpose).

One of these agents was Lee Harvey Oswald. He had been put into play by the CIA some years back and had gone so far as to live in the USSR for a short time and to even take a Russian wife. To further his credentials as a supporter of Communism, the CIA had him passing out pro-Castro leaflets on Intelligence Row in New Orleans (he was apparently working with Guy Bannister, an FBI agent, and was organizing some sort of "Fair Play for Cuba" committee), where he would no doubt be spotted by the Russians and duly catalogued as a possible tool for their side. The whole thing was so idiotically conspicuous, however, that the Russians never did approach. When Oswald was finally co-opted into RFK's Project Freedom, it is believed that he was sent down to Mexico City to attempt to acquire a visa to Cuba. It is worth noting at this point that like any secret project of this type, there was

always the possibility that Project Freedom would be exposed. To prepare for such an eventuality, contingency plans were drawn up, entailing protocols for secrecy to be followed should the project ever be compromised. Worth noting only as a footnote, some of these protocols were drawn up, in part, by Alexander Haig who was then a Lt. Colonel in the Army, though he would later rise to General under Nixon, become the Commander of NATO forces under Ford, and finally become Secretary of State under Reagan. Unfortunately, whatever happened in Mexico city concerning Oswald is a bit of a mystery to me. Legend has it that he banged on the embassy gates trying to get attention. I've heard a rumor that he met with a KGB assassin. There are even photographs which were taken of some guy who looks nothing like Oswald, though he apparently claimed he was Oswald, which in turn has led to speculation as to whether Oswald even went to Mexico City or whether this was all some sort of complicated ruse. There is so much disinformation, that it is very hard to sort out truth from fiction. About all we are left with is what we believe, though all beliefs are contain some measure of doubt.

Act 4: Marilyn Basically, Hoffa and Marcello (mob boss in New Orleans) and Giancana are all fed-up. RFK's campaign against the teamster boss and organized crime is taking a toll. These guys are being tailed by the FBI constantly, and they find it pretty annoying. It's clear that RFK wants to put them all away, and it's clear that he's going to keep at it for as long as he has the power to do so. Any attack on him directly is out of the question, as this would incite the public's rage, not to mention that of the president. So they decide to discredit him and knock him politically off-balance. Giancana uses what contacts he has in show business (which include Sinatra who has already been declared persona non-grata at the White House due to his mob connections despite having been a friend of JFK) to get to Marilyn and basically say, "Look, these two Kennedy brothers have been fucking the shit out of you, and they're using you as a toy. If you want to get even,

just go to the press. It'll destroy them politically and boost your celebrity all in the same instant." (I'm speculating here. It's all reasonable, but I have no idea if Giancana actually pulled her strings.) Marilyn decides to do just that, and soon Giancana finds out when Bobby is planning his late night visit of 04-Aug-1962. Now, whether Bobby and his people killed her (see "The Marilyn Files" by that loon, Robert Slatzer), or whether she's killed by Giancana (see "Double Cross" by Chuck Giancana), hoping suspicion would turn toward RFK, I have no idea. But it wasn't a suicide. The autopsy evidence points toward homicide, as do her personal circumstances. In any case, the whole thing was a failure from Giancana's standpoint, because suspicion didn't turn toward the Kennedy brothers. Not only does her red diary conveniently disappear (assuming it ever really existed), but Eunice Murray, her housekeeper, was busy tidying up the crime scene and WASHING MARILYN'S SHEETS when the police arrived. Her and Greenson had even moved the corpse (which would explain the peaceful position it was in when the police came). Was the housekeeper, who was hired in 1961, just trying to neaten up so that the cops wouldn't find Marilyn soaked in her own vomit? Or was she really working for someone else? And who the hell was Greenson really working for? As a psychiatrist, he should know well enough to leave a dead body alone for the police.

Act 5: The Assassination At some point in all this, you have to simply come up with a theory on what actually happened. I finally semi-subscribed to this idea, which was put out in a mini-series for Television called, simply enough, "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" (and which is still available on DVD though amazon.com) and which was the work of British producer Nigel Turner. This work has been soundly criticized from several corners, however, the leads/theory developed by writer/researcher Steve Rivele, which I'm about to tell you about, remain tantalizing. For a more thorough discussion of his theory and the criticism which he has received, see http://members.optushome.com.au/tnorth

In any case, the theory goes like this: With the Kennedy brothers still politically intact in a post-Marilyn world, Hoffa becomes even more agitated and pleads with Marcello and Giancana that something has to be done. They finally decide that the only way to fix things is to kill JFK. "Chop the head off the dog and his tail will stop wagging." So Carlos Marcello places a contract on JFK via Santos Trafficante, Jr. who in turn passes it along to Antwan Givinee, the leader of the corsican mafia in Marseilles (as an interesting sidenote, Givinee had a relationship w/ the OSS/CIA dating back to 1943). They're basically looking for a group of shooters to kill JFK in a fashion similar to that employed by the Chicago mob in 1933 in Miami, when they killed Anton Cermak, then mayor of Chicago. He was in an open-top motorcade with FDR at the time he was shot. However, because they are fully aware of Project Freedom, they want to make some special stipulations regarding the assassins: •

• • •

They have to be white (due to the assassination being planned to occur somewhere in the American south), hence nobody from beirut or hong kong, which were also places to hire killer aside from the mafia. They need to be highly experienced (this goes without saying). Must NOT be tied to American mafia, nor known to police (i.e. they certainly can't be Americans). Must be counted on not to talk to police if caught (a hard thing to guarantee... basically these guys have to have done enough bad things to prefer death over capture).

Paul Mondulloni, a gangster in Marseilles, is put in charge of the logistics and organization of the plot. For many years he was the liaison between the Givinee family and Santos Trafficante of the American mafia. He had run the corsican casinos in Havana before Castro came to power and had established the liaison with Trafficante then. They continued this liaison after Castro threw out the corsicans, and they moved to Montreal to establish a heroin smuggling outpost there. When you think of the "french connection", this guy is one of the main players to keep

in mind. I don't know the names of all the assassins who were hired, but one of them was probably Lucien Sarti. Aside from trafficking narcotics during the 1960s, he was also known as one of the top contract assassins in the world. He was thought to be a little reckless by those who worked with him, but he had a penchant for wearing disguises (such as a police uniform) as well as using explosive munitions. In the fall of 1963 the assassins were flown from Marseilles to Mexico City, and spent 3-4 weeks there at the house of a contact. I don't know whether or not they would have been there at the same time as Oswald. They were then driven to the US border at Brownsville, Texas where they used Italian passports to cross and then met with a representative of the Chicago Mafia who they spoke to in Italian. They were then driven to Dallas and put up in a safe house so as not to leave any hotel records. They spent several days taking photographs of Dealey Plaza and arranged the crossfire plan. After the job, the assassins stayed for about ten days in Dallas to let things cool down. Then they were flown by private plane to Montreal where they were paid in heroin. According to one source (Christian David, a drug smuggler), they later converted their heroin into cash in Buenos Aries with the help of a guy named Michele Nicoli who didn't know anything of the plot and had a reputation for doing conversions without asking any annoying questions. Whether or not Christian David can be trusted as a source for all this is an open debate. There are those in law enforcement who swear that he never gives false evidence, and many of his statements have checked out, but the guy was a drug smuggler, and he was trying to work a deal for himself.

Act 6: The Cover-Up As one might expect, this is the most interesting and the most convoluted part of the whole ordeal. However, taking into account a few seemingly minor details, there are two things we can probably infer. •

There were lots of low-level informers and CIA operatives who had more allegiance to the Mafia

•

than the CIA, mainly for monetary and historical reasons. The Mafia pays a hell of a lot more than government work, and many recruits are already more than knee-deep in crime when their country calls on them. Hence, it's likely that the Mafia knew about Project Freedom. Because Oswald was working under RFK's Project Freedom, he made an ideal patsy, because once his identity would be known by the attorney general and those working with him under Project Freedom, this section of the Washington establishment would have to step in under the contingency plans drawn by Lt. Col. Haig and others in order to keep Project Freedom from becoming generally known by the public, and hence by Cuba & the USSR.

Hence, the Secret Service immediately lays claim to Kennedy's body, and it is flown to Bethesda for an autopsy, the results of which are never released (although they did produce a great fake autopsy report). This, of course, cut out the doctors at Parkland hospital in Dallas. Furthermore, the FBI on direct orders from Hoover, quickly requisitions all the physical evidence, essentially cutting out Jesse Curry's Dallas Police Department. With no body and no physical evidence, the case is pretty much closed, except, of course, for one small detail. Oswald.

Act 7: Jack Ruby Jack Ruby has a pretty interesting history. He was once a runner for Al Capone in Chicago and based his life around gambling, narcotics, and prostitution. He ran the Carousel Club in Dallas, which was but one in a long string of unsuccessful nightclubs. He swam every morning in the pool at his apartment, and in the months prior to the assassination, his calls to well-connected mob figures had increased 10-20 fold, a pattern which had begun in late april w/ the announcement of JFK's intended visit to Dallas. According to journalist Seth Kantor, in the weeks preceding the assassination, Ruby had visits from mob

figures he had not seen in 20 years. In May of 1963, Ruby traveled to New Orleans to negotiate with Harold Tannenbaum in order to get one or more strippers for his club. He recruited a red-haired stripper by the name of Jada who worked at a club owned by New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who was targeted by Robert Kennedy and who had sworn vengeance. Of course, we don't need to go into that again. In any case, it seems possible that Jack may have been up to his eyeballs in debt to the mob. At least, that's how I figure it. They were keeping him afloat with his two-bit nightclubs, and this was his way to repay the favor. It was a hell of a way to repay the favor, but there you have it. He knows that if he doesn't, something much worse could be in store. So, under mysterious circumstances, he somehow gains access to the Dallas City Jail's briefing room where Oswald is being questioned by reporters. He has a gun and he's suppose to do it there, but he chickens out. Thirty-six hours and a couple threats later, he somehow, again mysteriously, gains access to the parking garage where Oswald is to be transferred from jail. Oswald is being escorted through the garage by Jim Leavelle and LC Graves, and there he is shot once by Ruby. Jim & LC got the all clear signal before the car was completely in place, and this allowed Jack Ruby to make his move. Funny how these things just work out, eh? Doctors say he died in the operating room at 1:07pm, however, he appears to have lost consciousness in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. So anyway, Ruby goes to prison and stays in a cell overlooking Dealey Plaza for the next two and a half years before he dies of cancer. Wouldn't it be a hoot if, somehow, he already knew he had cancer, and just figured what the hell.

Act 8: Unanswered Questions This theory provides a decent basis for everything that happened, the assassination, the cover-up, and Jack Ruby, but it still leaves a lot of loose strings. For instance, we still don't know who Oswald really was or why this ex-military, probable-CIA guy was working in the book depository in the first place. We don't really know who killed

officer J.D. Tippit in the Oak Cliff area three miles from downtown only 45 minutes after the assassination. Oswald was blamed, but if he did it, then why? We don't know why Oswald ran into a theater without paying admission. Why not simply pay like everyone else and avoid attracting any undue attention? We don't know if Oswald really met with a KGB assassin in Mexico City, or if this is just a baseless rumor. We don't even know with certainty that he was in Mexico City. We don't know what he was carrying to work in the brown wrapping on the day of the assassination. He told a friend that it was curtain rods, but could it have been a broken down, high-powered rifle as authorities later concluded? Was he taking it there for somebody else to use or was he one of the shooters? Keep in mind, this is a guy who had been a marine, who had a high security clearance, and who had even tracked U2 flights over Russia. Oswald was not some idiot, even if he tried to come across that way once he was caught. It seems blindingly obvious that he must have been in on the hit in some manner, but to what extent? Of course, we never found out. Jack Ruby killed him for the purpose of "sparing Jackie the agony of the trial." Talk about chivalry. There's just an awful lot which this theory, as good as it sounds, doesn't even attempt to answer. In conclusion, this is just a weird theory. I'd be curious to hear the opinions of others more schooled in history and politics than myself. That probably includes just about everyone reading this. I recall being at a game at Lee's house, and afterward the topic of conversation somehow turned to history, and I found myself a novice in a room full of professors. So feel free to chime in and lend what ideas you have, that is assuming you feel that conspiracy theories are a worthy topic for an RPG-oriented APA.