Legacy of Secrecy (145 page)

1971 book by Harold Weisberg, which discussed the tapes of Milteer

from November 1963. Judge Seymour Gelber later said that between

1971 and 1976, the Dade County state attorney’s files on the Milteer

case disappeared from a North Miami warehouse, even though they

“consisted of thousands of pages of transcripts and documents.”33

Heroin trafficking remained a hot topic in the news in 1974, and Sam

Giancana’s involvement in a narcotics ring eventually became too much

for Mexican authorities. Giancana was suddenly and unceremoniously

deported from Mexico on July 18, 1974, and returned to Chicago, where

a grand jury was waiting for him.34

In Washington, pressure for impeachment kept building during the

spring and summer of 1974. Former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford

had become vice president after Spiro Agnew had to resign for pay-

offs unrelated to Watergate. General Alexander Haig was by that time

Nixon’s chief of staff, and both Haig and Ford played crucial roles in the

events that resulted in Richard Nixon finally announcing his resignation

730

LEGACY OF SECRECY

to a nationwide television audience on August 8, 1974. Gerald Ford was

sworn in as president the following day, picking moderate Republican

Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. On September 8, 1974, many

Republican officials breathed a sigh of relief when Ford issued a full

pardon to Nixon, which was “unconditional for all crimes Nixon may

have committed in the White House.” Ford tried to quietly issue the

pardon on a Sunday morning, but it was still controversial, because

numerous prosecutions were still ongoing. The pardon removed the

leverage prosecutors needed to get Nixon to testify in those cases, or

about other officials who could only be indicted and prosecuted with

Nixon’s testimony. Ford’s act helped to ensure that many of Watergate’s

mysteries would remain just that until after Nixon’s death.35

E. Howard Hunt and his codefendants were not so lucky, and were

among those who went to prison for their roles in Nixon’s operations,

Hunt for thirty-three months. More than two dozen Nixon aides and

officials had been prosecuted, from Haldeman and Ehrlichman to those

far less well-known.

The prosecution of one little-remembered official from the Watergate

era would eventually lead to charges being brought against Santo Traf-

ficante and Carlos Marcello, netting Marcello a conviction that would

finally fulfill Bobby Kennedy’s goal of sending the godfather away for

a long prison term. In 1972, Nixon had appointed Richard Kleindienst

as attorney general, to replace John Mitchell. Kleindienst would later be

convicted for lying to a Senate committee. After Kleindienst’s resigna-

tion, he became involved in what Dan Moldea described as “a multimil-

lion-dollar insurance swindle involving the Teamsters.” Moldea says

that Kleindienst was “convicted with” an “insurance swindler” named

Joe Hauser. Also involved in the scheme was Santo Trafficante, who was

indicted, though he wouldn’t go to prison. More importantly, to avoid

prison Joe Hauser agreed to help the FBI. Hauser eventually became the

first wired informant to get close to Carlos Marcello, as part of an FBI

sting called Operation BRILAB (for “bribery and labor”).36

Chapter Sixty-four

By fall 1974, the intense press and Congressional interest in Watergate

began to fade—but less than six months after Nixon’s resignation, new

revelations in an article by Sy Hersh triggered a fresh round of inqui-

ries. The hearings increasingly centered on JFK’s assassination, and

one investigation would spawn another until the end of the decade. At

times the hearings came so close to exposing the truth that Santo Traf-

ficante, Carlos Marcello, and their associates felt they had no choice but

to have Congressional witnesses killed, sometimes on the eve of their

testimony.

With Sy Hersh’s December 22, 1974, article in the
New York Times
,

the mainstream media finally began to expose what its headlines called

the “Huge CIA [Domestic Surveillance] Operation” directed against

antiwar critics in the US. CIA Director William Colby fired Counter-

Intelligence Chief James Angleton the next day, but the firestorm had

begun. To quell the furor, President Ford appointed a blue ribbon com-

mission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to look into

the CIA’s domestic activities. However, since most of the Rockefeller

Commission’s members were conservative establishment figures like

Ronald Reagan, and its Executive Director was former Warren Com-

mission counsel David Belin, charges of “whitewash” were inevitable.

Though primarily devoted to domestic intelligence abuses, the commis-

sion soon started looking into JFK’s assassination, to debunk reports

that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Fiorini were two of the “three tramps”

photographed in Dealey Plaza.1

After Watergate, Congress and the press were far quicker to investi-

gate official wrongdoing, and the Rockefeller Commission soon found

itself competing for headlines, witnesses, and documents with Congres-

sional committees. Congress was already preparing to investigate the

scandal uncovered by Hersh when President Ford met with a group of

editors from the
New York Times
on January 16, 1975. Ford told them the

Rockefeller Commission had to be careful not to expose certain past

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

CIA operations, “like assassinations.” Ford quickly tried to qualify his

remark, saying it was off the record, but word raced through journal-

istic circles, reaching Congress and adding CIA assassinations to their

agenda.2

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was created on January

27 and chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee

soon authorized a subcommittee devoted to the JFK assassination, headed

by moderate Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Schweiker

and including Colorado Senator Gary Hart. On February 19, 1975, the

House created the Nedzi Committee. Soon to be called the Pike Com-

mittee, it too would delve into CIA assassinations, at times touching on

the JFK assassination without realizing it.

The general public finally heard about President Ford’s “assassina-

tions” comment on February 28, 1975, during Daniel Schorr’s CBS news

broadcast. Schorr had also obtained from CIA Director William Colby

an indirect confirmation of CIA assassination attempts against foreign

leaders.3 Even more attention focused on JFK’s assassination after March

6, 1975, when Geraldo Rivera showed American TV audiences the com-

plete Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination for the first time, on his late-

night ABC show,
Goodnight America
. Though of much poorer quality

than today’s digitally enhanced version, the film stunned audiences

with their first glimpse of JFK being thrown back and to the left after

being shot—indicating a shot from the front. (For the next decade, show-

ings of the Zapruder film on TV would remain relatively rare.)4

Jack Anderson weighed in with new articles about the CIA-Mafia

plots on March 10 and 13, having already named Johnny Rosselli as one

of those involved. Four days later,
Time
magazine advanced the story by

adding Sam Giancana to the plots with Rosselli and the CIA. To help deal

with the increasing barrage of headlines about CIA assassinations and

other misdeeds, in March 1975 David Atlee Phillips made arrangements

to retire from the CIA. Since the press revelations could also uncover his

own unsavory activities, Phillips immediately founded the Association

of Retired Intelligence Officers, designed to counter the negative public-

ity the Agency was receiving.5

Richard Helms was called back from his ambassadorial post in Iran—

where the Shah’s regime had become even more brutal and repressive—

to begin a series of increasingly intense rounds of testimony to the

investigating committees. The Church Committee interviewed Helms

on April 23, followed by the Rockefeller Commission staff on April 27,

and culminating with a four-hour private session with the Rockefeller

Commissioners on April 28, 1975. Upon leaving, Helms saw CBS news-

man Daniel Schorr. Fearing that the secret cover-ups he had maintained

since 1962 were about to unravel, Helms exploded in fury at the man

he blamed for making them public—Daniel Schorr. As described by

Schorr:

Helms[’s] face, ashen from strain and fatigue, turned livid. “You son-

of-a-bitch!” he raged. “You killer! You cocksucker! ‘Killer Schorr’—

that’s what they ought to call you!” Continuing his string of curses,

he strode toward the press room.6

Helms was furious that his long-hidden secrets were being exposed,

and his use of the term “killer” could indicate his worry that the revela-

tions of Schorr and the committees might result in the death of a CIA

asset. Since most of the publicity focused on the decade-old plots to

assassinate Fidel Castro, and most of the non-Mafia CIA assets from

those operations were either out of harm’s way or already in Cuban

prisons (like Cubela and Menoyo), Helms may have been worrying (or

rationalizing) that a valuable asset like Almeida could be exposed and

killed.

Declassified files now make it clear that Helms lied to both com-

mittees about his unauthorized Castro assassination plots (admitting

only a limited amount of information) and completely hiding the JFK-

Almeida coup plan and most of AMWORLD (including its code name

and immense size). However, he wasn’t the only one—in contrast to Wil-

liam Colby’s carefully cultivated public image as being almost too forth-

coming with Congress, according to the Church staff, “when it came to

the assassination plots . . . Colby closed the door” and wouldn’t cooper-

ate. Beginning a pattern to obstruct Congress that would be repeated

by the CIA with a later committee, Colby appointed Seymour Bolten—

Desmond FitzGerald’s former assistant during the JFK-Almeida coup

plan and the CIA-Mafia plots—to be the CIA’s liaison to the Church

Committee.7 Thus, the person ostensibly helping the Committee

was someone who should have been interrogated and investigated

himself.

Even as the Rockefeller Commission issued its final report on June

11, 1975, the Church Committee intensified its efforts. On June 13, the

Church Committee again grilled Helms, this time exclusively about CIA

assassination plots, including those with the Mafia. His testimony was

in closed session, so the public had no way to know what he said—or

didn’t say.

Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello must have worried about what

734

LEGACY OF SECRECY

might come out concerning the CIA’s assassination plots, since it could

expose their roles in JFK’s murder. In the short term, Trafficante had the

most to lose, since he’d played a much bigger role in the CIA-Mafia plots.

Trafficante would have been especially worried when Sam Giancana

was subpoenaed and slated to testify on June 26.

On July 19, 1975, Sam Giancana became the first of several Congres-

sional witnesses to be murdered. The former mob boss was cooking a

late-night meal for a trusted friend who was visiting Giancana’s home

in the Chicago neighborhood of Oak Park. His friend shot Giancana

seven times with a silenced .22-caliber pistol, an unusually small gun

for a mob hit. Five of the shots were around Giancana’s chin and mouth,

a sign that Mafiosi shouldn’t talk.8

The gun was eventually traced to Florida, and some pointed the finger

at Trafficante. One government informant, Charles Crimaldi, said that

Giancana was killed by someone who worked for the CIA, though the

hit man was acting on his own and not at the request of officials. Since

several CIA assets and officials also worked with the Mafia, it could have

been someone with ties to both the mob and intelligence.9

Giancana’s murder made headlines across the country, adding

urgency to the committees’ investigations. The day after Giancana’s

death, CIA Director William Colby testified about CIA assassination

plots, followed four days later by Johnny Rosselli. The transcripts—kept

secret until the 1990s—show that Johnny Rosselli had mastered the art

of saying a lot while revealing little, sticking to an incomplete version of

the CIA-Mafia plots that mirrored the whitewashed version Helms had

promulgated in his own testimony and in the 1967 Inspector General’s

Report. Jack Anderson wrote once more about Rosselli on July 7, and

Time
magazine ran an article touching on the original 1959 CIA Mafia

plots that Hoffa had brokered—a story Hoffa himself had just leaked to

someone with the Church Committee.10 On July 17 and 18, the Church

Committee once more interrogated Helms about assassination plots, in

closed sessions.

Jimmy Hoffa was now in the crosshairs of the Committee, because