The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination Read Free Page B

last for decades, and some writers make the case that they continue even today.
    Also hindering the 1966 and early 1967 investigations by mainstream news organizations was the JFK murder probe begun in late 1966 by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film JFK ). Though Garrison first focused on Carlos Marcello’s pilot and investigator in 1963—David Ferrie—Marcello’s name never publicly surfaced in Garrison’s probe. FBI files show that Garrison came close to publicly naming Marcello twice but never did.
    After Ferrie’s sudden death early in Garrison’s investigation, the District Attorney took his inquiry far from the Mafia, and it soon became a media circus. None of the hundreds of articles in the mainstream press about it mentioned Ferrie’s work for Marcello in 1963 or raised the possibility of Mafia involvement in the assassination.
    By mid-1967 the mainstream media had ended serious investigations of JFK’s assassination and had become highly critical of Garrison. Mainstream journalists didn’t resume writing about the assassination until late 1974 and early 1975, in the aftermath of Watergate investigations, when the first widespread reports emerged about CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro in the early 1960s emerged. Those revelations spawned new investigations such as the Rockefeller Commission andthe Senate Church Committee, which eventually added a JFK assassination subcommittee that included Senator Gary Hart. In the summer of 1975, the mob stymied those investigations by murdering two key figures in the CIA–Mafia plots—Rosselli’s former boss Sam Giancana and Jimmy Hoffa—before they could testify. The investigations were also hindered by the massive amount of relevant information withheld by the FBI and CIA. When Johnny Rosselli, who was central to the CIA–Mafia plots, was gruesomely murdered the following year, the resulting media firestorm led to the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The House Committee also found itself thwarted by a spate of sudden deaths of mob-connected potential witnesses—some murders, some suicides, some (such as Martino and Morales) by natural causes—and the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence withheld even more relevant information. In the case of both the House Select Committee and the Church Committee, the CIA assigned as its Committee liaison an Agency veteran of the 1963 anti-Castro plotting who actually should have been called as a witness.
    Still, due to books such as Dan Moldea’s The Hoffa Wars and the House Select Committee’s investigation, the press finally linked Marcello and Trafficante to JFK’s assassination. Surprisingly, only in the late 1970s did Jack Ruby first become widely identified in the press as a mobster, even though some journalists had known of his mob ties for years. After the House Committee ended with its 1979 conclusion of conspiracy, more books and lengthy mainstream articles with evidence of conspiracy followed, including works by former Senate and House investigator Gaeton Fonzi and former FBI agent William Turner, who had been the first agent to publicly confront J. Edgar Hoover. Both men gave me important, early assistance when I began researching JFK’s murder in the late 1980s.
    In 1985 the FBI finally obtained Carlos Marcello’s confession to JFK’s assassination, including details of how it was carried out and the godfather’s meetings with Oswald and Ruby. Yet none of that information was released to the public at the time or during the intense media coverage of the twenty-fifth anniversary of JFK’s murder in November 1988—and in fact it wouldn’t reach the public for years. Nonetheless, mainstream documentaries and articles casting suspicion on Marcello and the Mafia appeared at the time.
    Oliver Stone left the Mafia—including the extensive work that David Ferrie (memorably played in the film by Joe Pesci) performed for Carlos Marcello