Legacy of Secrecy

L E G A C Y O F S E C R E C Y

LEGACY

OF

SECRECY

the long shadow of the

JFK A S S AS SINA TI O N

Lamar Waldron

Thom Hartmann

C O U N T E R P O I N T

b e r k e l e y

To my father, who showed me the way

To all those who have been inspired by John F. Kennedy,

Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King

Copyright © 2008 by Lamar Waldron.

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Waldron, Lamar, 1954-

Legacy of secrecy : the long shadow of the JFK assassination /

Lamar Waldron & Thom Hartmann.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58243-422-3

ISBN-10: 1-58243-422-0

1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963—Assassination.

2. Official secrets—United States—History—20th century.

3. Conspiracies—United States—History—20th century.

4. Political corruption—United States—History—20th century.

I. Hartmann, Thom, 1951- II. Title.

E842.9.W275 2008 973.922092—dc22

2008039740

Cover design by Sarah Juckniess

Printed in the United States of America

C O U N T E R P O I N T

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction and Overview vii

PART THREE

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART FOUR

PART FIVE

Photographs and

Documents

773

Introduction and Overview

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963,

triggered cover-ups by officials that continue to negatively impact

American politics, life, and foreign policy.
Legacy of Secrecy
details those

cover-ups and hidden investigations, many for the first time, including

the reasons they were carried out under such intense secrecy. Most were

spawned by John and Robert Kennedy’s “top secret” 1963 plan to stage a

coup against Fidel Castro—a plan so highly classified that it only started

to be exposed in 2005 and is finally fully revealed in this book.1

Their own confessions now show that three Mafia bosses—Carlos

Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli—were behind JFK’s

assassination. They used parts of the secret coup plan to kill JFK in a

way that forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon

B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and high CIA official Richard

Helms to withhold crucial information not only from the public and

the press, but also from each other and sometimes their own investiga-

tors. It’s important to keep in mind that JFK was murdered just a year

after the tense nuclear standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The

main goals of US officials were to prevent a nuclear confrontation with

the Soviets and to protect JFK’s ally high in the Cuban government:

Commander Juan Almeida, head of the Cuban Army in 1963—still listed

as Cuba’s No. 3 official today.

While US leaders managed to prevent a confrontation with Russia

and preserve a critical ally high in the Cuban government, this limted

the investigation into JFK’s murder, allowing the three Mafia chiefs and

their associates to remain free. As a result, the long shadow of secrecy

surrounding both JFK’s murder and the coup plan set the stage for the

murder of Martin Luther King, ultimately driving two Presidents from

office, and bringing about the murders of five Congressional witnesses

in the mid-1970s.

viii

LEGACY OF SECRECY

Legacy of Secrecy
breaks important new ground in key areas, detailing for

the first time Louisiana godfather Carlos Marcello’s clear confession to

ordering JFK’s assassination. Marcello’s criminal empire ranged from

Dallas to Memphis, and previously secret files at the National Archives

have shown that he made this confession in 1985 to an FBI informant

ruled credible by a federal judge, as part of a secret FBI undercover sting

operation named CAMTEX. Exposed here for the first time, CAMTEX

yielded Marcello’s admission that he’d met Lee Harvey Oswald and

set Jack Ruby up in business in Dallas. The operation also generated

hundreds of hours of heretofore secret prison audiotapes of Marcello

discussing his crimes, recorded using the FBI informant’s bugged tran-

sistor radio. Yet the FBI and Justice Department withheld most of that

information from the public and Congress for years, until its revelation

in this book.

Carlos Marcello wasn’t the only mob boss who confessed his

involvement in JFK’s murder to a trusted associate.
Legacy
also uncovers

important new information about Marcello’s partners in JFK’s assas-

sination, Tampa godfather Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli, the

Chicago Mafia’s man in Las Vegas and Hollywood. Shortly before their

deaths, both mobsters admitted their roles in JFK’s murder to their

attorneys. Two of their associates, with documented ties to the secret

JFK-Almeida coup plan, likewise confessed.

Using exclusive new information, supported by FBI files apparently

withheld from Congress,
Legacy
names two of the Georgia men who paid

James Earl Ray to kill Dr. Martin Luther King: white supremacist Joseph

Milteer and Hugh R. Spake. Milteer, who had been involved in Marcello’s

murder of JFK, was part of a smal clique of racists in Atlanta who used

Marcello to broker the contract to murder Dr. King. We document James

Earl Ray’s ties to Marcello’s heroin smuggling operation and long over-

looked evidence in FBI files linking Ray to Marcello’s associate, Johnny

Rosselli. Finally,
Legacy,
explains why Ray—while fleeing to Canada the

day after killing Dr. King in Memphis—made a 400-plus mile detour

south to Atlanta, where he contacted Spake to get help from Milteer.

In 1979, the last Congressional committee to investigate the murders

of JFK and Dr. King—the House Select Committee on Assassinations

(HSCA)—concluded “that Trafficante, like Marcello, had the motive,

means, and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy.” The HSCA

had been created in the wake of Rosselli’s sensational murder, but the

HSCA “was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello’s complicity,”

and the same was true for Trafficante and Rosselli—because the CIA,

FBI, and other federal agencies withheld so many relevant files. The

HSCA, headed by civil rights figure Rep. Louis Stokes, also concluded

“there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination [of Dr. King]”

and that “financial gain was [James Earl] Ray’s primary motivation.” But

they were unable to determine who had paid Ray, or how the conspiracy

had worked, because the FBI and other agencies hid critical files.

With the help of more than two dozen associates of John and Robert

Kennedy—backed up by thousands of recently released documents

at the National Archives, many of which are quoted here for the first

time—
Legacy
tells the full story long denied to Congress and the Ameri-

can people.

Because top US officials covered up so much about JFK’s assassination,

of the dozen people knowingly involved in that murder, three were

free to participate in Dr. King’s slaying five years later. At the heart of

the 1963 cover-ups lay the top-secret plans of John and Robert Kennedy

to stage a coup against Cuba’s Fidel Castro—set for December 1, 1963,

ten days after JFK’s Dallas trip. The Kennedys’ goal was democracy for

Cuba, after what they hoped would always appear to be a seemingly

internal “palace coup.” The Kennedys had banned the Mafia from the

operation and from reopening their casinos if the coup succeeded.2

JFK’s plans for a coup in Cuba—which included a “full-scale

invasion” if necessary—were detailed in the authors’ previous book,

Ultimate Sacrifice
. The 2006 expanded trade paperback edition first

named Almeida as the coup leader after the National Archives released

his identity after more than four decades of secrecy.
Ultimate Sacrifice
also

exposed how Robert Kennedy had US officials secretly develop plans

for dealing with “the assassination of American officials” if Fidel found

out about the coup plans and retaliated.3

Legacy of Secrecy
also adds important new information showing how

Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli—desperate to end Robert Kennedy’s

unprecedented prosecutions of them and their associates—infiltrated

the JFK-Almeida coup plan and used parts of it to murder JFK. Their first

attempts to kill JFK, in Chicago (on November 2, 1963) and then during

JFK’s long motorcade in Tampa (November 18), failed—but because

they had planted clues implicating Fidel, Robert Kennedy and other

officials were forced to cover up those threats to protect the security of

the JFK-Almeida coup plan. The Mafia chiefs made sure their murder

of JFK in Dallas on November 22, 1963, involved ties to the coup plan

and false clues pointing to Fidel. As a result, Robert Kennedy and other

x

LEGACY OF SECRECY

high officials had to withhold key information in order to prevent, in

the words of President Johnson, a nuclear holocaust that could cost the

lives of “forty million Americans.”4

Legacy
provides a well-documented and definitive account of the