Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (No Series) (75 page)

110
“I was not dealing with the Mafia as such”: Harvey testimony, Church Committee, June 25, 1975.

110
“He became best friends with Rosselli”: Author interview with Gary Hart.

110
“I told Bill Harvey…to close it down”: Helms, 202.

110
“I don’t want anybody on this committee to think I’m being slippery”: Helms testimony, Church Committee, July 17, 1975.

111
The CIA death plots against Castro preceded the Kennedy administration: Contrary to some accounts, the Kennedy brothers’ Operation Mongoose was not an assassination program but a subversion operation aimed at inciting an internal Cuban uprising. Defense Secretary McNamara did float the idea of “liquidating” Castro at a Mongoose meeting on August 10, 1962. But in an interview with the author, he dismissed this as “idle chatter,” insisting that he never seriously “proposed or would have supported assassination.” When Lansdale recorded the off-hand remark in his memorandum of the meeting, McCone strongly objected, saying the U.S. government should “not consider such actions on moral or ethical grounds.” When he phoned McNamara to emphasize this, McCone later recalled, the defense secretary “agreed with me wholeheartedly and the words were eliminated from the memorandum.” Lansdale later told the Rockefeller Commission that the Mongoose group raised the assassination idea only as a “possibility,” but quickly rejected it. He testified that the reaction against it was “quite sharp by members of the group, including the attorney general, McCone, and McGeorge Bundy, among others.” 112 “[Helms] was very clear that this was something that had been canceled”: McCone testimony, Church Committee, October 9, 1975.

112
“The fact that this happened is very disturbing to me”: McCone testimony, Rockefeller Commission, May 5, 1975.

113
Assassination…“was totally foreign to [JFK’s] character”: Sorensen testimony, Church Committee, July 21, 1975.

114
“It would have made whoever ate the sugar feel very lousy”: Author interview with Carl Kaysen.

114
the United States simply arranged for a sugar firm to buy the cargo: William Sturbitts deposition, Rockefeller Commission, April 16, 1975.

115
“I’m going to come back here and run against you”: James Donovan speech to Inland Daily Press Association, published as “Cuban Negotiator’s Own Story,” April 18, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Papers, JFK Library.

116
“Viva Donovan!”: Bohning, 168.

116
“Bob wanted me to deal with Donovan”: Author interview with John Nolan.

116
“Castro was never irrational”: Nolan oral history, JFK Library.

117
“we should start thinking along more flexible lines”: Quoted in Bohning, 168.

117
“Before falling asleep at night”: Author interview with Nolan.

118
CIA spokesman Sam Halpern claimed it was not: Bohning, 182.

118
the former Kennedy aide…confront[ed] a CIA official: Author interview with Nolan.

118
Shackley…wrote a memo to his CIA boss: CIA memo, March 19, 1964, NARA record number 104-10072-10289. Burt, who was one of several Miami journalists given the CIA cryptonynm “AM/CARBON” (the “AM” denoted a Cuba connection and “CARBON” referred to print journalists), later denied that he knowingly served the agency as a media asset. “Calling me a propaganda outlet was bureaucratic boasting on his part,” Burt said of Shackley, in an interview for David Corn’s 1994 biography of the CIA official.

119
“She was fiercely independent”: Author interview with Nolan.

120
“do something about that son of a bitch Bobby Kennedy”: Quoted in Sheridan, 216.

121
“We know where your kids go to school”: Quoted in Warren Rogers,
When I Think of Bobby: A Personal Memoir of the Kennedy Years
, 53.

122
“If you want to kill a dog”: Quoted in John H. Davis
Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
, 34. Years later, while serving prison time, Marcello launched into another of his many anti-Kennedy tirades, telling an FBI informant on December 15, 1985, “Yeah, I had that son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did it. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.” 122 “He is going to be hit”: Ibid., 37. Like Marcello, Trafficante also confessed a role in the JFK assassination late in his life. Shortly before his death on March 17, 1987, the ailing Florida crime lord told his lawyer that he and Marcello had “fucked up in getting rid of [JFK]—maybe it should have been Bobby.” 122 Kennedy’s “soft” policies toward the Castro regime: Frank Ragano,
Mob Lawyer
, 358.

122
“I don’t know how Bobby Kennedy squared that”: Quoted in Hersh, 287.

123
“I’m not working with guys outside the system”: Quoted in
New York
magazine, April 18, 2005.

123
“whether I was directed to sally forth and initiate contact with…the underworld”: Charles Ford memo for the record, September 19, 1975, NARA record number 104-10303-10001.

124
Bobby Kennedy “has so many enemies”: Quoted in Davis, 19.

124
“You can’t touch me. I’ve got immunity.” Quoted in Waldron, 357.

125
Bobby found himself…digging in an Illinois farm field: Robert F. Kennedy,
The Enemy Within
, 184.

127
“They have the smooth faces and cruel eyes of gangsters”: Ibid, 88.

127
“So you’re Joey Gallo”: Quoted in
Life
, January 26, 1962.

128
the two men clashed with a kind of fury she had never seen: Schlesinger, 142.

128
“The old man saw this as dangerous”: Quoted in Russo,
The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America
, 313.

128
“I definitely know you have the goods”: Smith, 147.

128
“I wouldn’t be too discouraged”: Ibid., 549.

129
“Yes, he was amoral”: Blair interview with Arthur Krock, Blair papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

130
“Bob was a little keyed up”: Ruth Watt oral history, JFK Library.

130
Bobby was “the least like his father”: Schlesinger, 97.

130
still calling Bobby her “own little pet”: Smith, 535.

130
“The scariest one” was Vito Genovese: Watt oral history, JFK Library.

131
“Two tousle-haired brothers from Boston”:
U.S. News & World Report
, April 12, 1957.

131
“They feel they’re above the law,” Kennedy told Paar’s audience: Hoffa later filed a $2 million libel suit against Kennedy and
The Tonight Show
host. Kennedy laughed off Hoffa’s showboating tactic, but he couldn’t help needling Paar, who took the lawsuit seriously. “What are we going to do? We are in trouble,” a nervous Paar phoned Bobby. “We certainly are in trouble,” Kennedy told him, “if you don’t have your half.” 132 “We’re exempting everyone but hoodlums”: Newsreel footage featured in the 1992 PBS
Frontline
documentary, “JFK, Hoffa and the Mob.” 132 “We were like flint and steel”: Quoted in G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings,
Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime
, 220. 133 “he directed the same shriveling look at my brother”: Kennedy,
The Enemy Within
, 74.

133
“All this hocus-pocus…is a smoke screen:” Quoted in Ronald Goldfarb,
Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy’s War Against Organized Crime
, 188.

134
“A Saturday night ice cream”: Ragano, 181.

134
“for real debauchery he turns to chocolate ice cream”:
Life
, January 26, 1962.

134
“I’m no damn angel”: Quoted in Richard D. Mahoney,
Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy
, 38.

134
“It just killed him”: Ibid., xv.

135
“Henry the Fourth. That’s my father”: Ibid., 376.

135
the FBI was “the greatest organization in the Government”: Smith, 680.

135
“every gangster chief in the United States was there”: Quoted in Anthony Summers,
The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover
, 310.

136
Kennedy [met] with Chicago godfather Sam Giancana: Hersh, 135.

136
“The Republicans stole as many votes”: Salinger oral history, JFK Library.

137
“He challenged them”: Author interview with William Daley.

137
“Jack’s hair would have turned white”: Quoted in Russo,
The Outfit
, 366.

137
“the old man is hurting you”: Ibid.

138
he “was in the soup worse than ever”: Quoted in Dan E. Moldea,
The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob
, 109.

138
“My boss, Jack Miller, called me in one day”: Author interview with Goldfarb.

139
“He was burning the candle at both ends”: Ibid.

140
“They treat him like a whore”: Quoted in Rappleye, 235.

140
“Why, oh why, did Joe get that fucking stroke?” Quoted in Summers,
Sinatra: The Life
, 287.

141
“Christ, how can I silence that voice?” Quoted in Russo, 243.

141
“that little son of a bitch is breaking my balls”: Quoted in Rappleye, 231.

141
“we felt that we could not look to the FBI”: Author interview with John Cassidy.

141
“we formed our own intelligence unit”: Author interview with Guthman.

142
“it is such nonsense to…waste time prosecuting the Communist Party”: Quoted in Summers,
J. Edgar Hoover
, 327.

142
“My father would send us kids into Hoover’s office”: Author interview with Joseph Kennedy II.

142
“And having Brumus”: Author interview with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

142
“he was saving everything he had on Kennedy”: William Sullivan,
The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI
, 50.