Legacy of Secrecy (32 page)

so much time and Bobby “would be out of touch all the time that he was

in the air.” Bobby agreed, and stayed put while they continued their

almost two hour–long talk.

Chapter Twelve

On November 22, 1963, Bobby Kennedy was running on the adrenaline

that would sustain him, with only a few exceptions, through that day

and much of the next. McCone said that during their talk, Bobby “never

cracked—he was steely.” McCone adds that their talk “was punctuated

by these phone calls that would come in. . . . [Bobby] has a White House

phone in the corner of the swimming pool.” As more information came

in about the events in Dallas, Bobby confronted McCone with a sur-

prising question. As Bobby later told his top Hoffa prosecutor, Walter

Sheridan, “At the time, I asked McCone . . . if they [the CIA] had killed

my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and

[McCone said] they hadn’t.”1

McCone left Bobby’s estate less than thirty minutes after Oswald

arrived at police headquarters in Dallas, and well before any news flash

or FBI report named Oswald as the prime suspect. (Hoover himself

would first call Bobby about Oswald thirty-one minutes after McCone

left.) That timing makes it almost impossible for Oswald’s name to

have triggered Bobby’s question to McCone. More likely, Bobby asked

McCone because both men knew they were only about ten days away

from Almeida’s coup, which could have involved Fidel Castro being

assassinated by snipers as he traveled in an open car. On one hand, it

could have been Fidel retaliating in one of the ways Bobby’s subcommit-

tee had been discussing for more than two months: with the “assassina-

tion of American officials.” But the subcommittee had considered that

unlikely to happen inside the United States. Bobby apparently agreed

with that assessment, because his suspicions on the afternoon of Novem-

ber 22 were not directed at Castro, but instead at someone involved with

the JFK-Almeida coup plan who had used part of that plan to kill JFK

instead of Castro. It’s important to note that at some point after JFK’s

murder, McCone told Bobby that he “thought there were two people

involved in the shooting.”2

McCone apparently gave Bobby an answer that afternoon that reas-

sured the Attorney General that the CIA
hadn’t
killed JFK. But, as we

documented earlier, McCone (and Bobby) didn’t know about Helms’s

unauthorized operations with mob bosses like Rosselli, dealings that

had allowed several of Bobby’s exile leaders to be compromised by the

Mafia. While Bobby felt he could “ask McCone in a way that he couldn’t

lie to me,” Bobby couldn’t account for what McCone himself didn’t

know. In light of the impending JFK-Almeida coup operation that both

men had been working on for months, Bobby’s question was probably

framed in a way that addressed the coup plan.

Certainly, Bobby and McCone would have discussed what to do

about the coup, and what to tell incoming president Lyndon Johnson.3

Starting the next day, McCone would meet with LBJ every day, some-

times several times a day, for several weeks.4 LBJ had been completely

excluded from the Cuba planning, as well as from many foreign-policy

decisions. While Rusk and McNamara could bring LBJ up to speed on

most of the world’s hot spots, they didn’t know all that McCone did

about Cuba. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Tay-

lor and Defense Intelligence Head Joseph Carroll would be able to fill

LBJ in about the big picture and military side of the coup and invasion,

but only McCone knew details about key parts of the operation, such

as how the CIA had gotten Almeida’s family out, where they were, and

the $50,000 payment to Almeida.

Bobby and McCone would undoubtedly have had the CIA check to

see if anything unusual had happened to Almeida’s family that might

indicate the Kennedys had been double-crossed. One of the CIA agents

who would have been involved in such activities was E. Howard Hunt,

who had helped to provide the CIA assistance Harry had promised

Almeida. Apparently, no problems were found because, as we’ll soon

describe, Bobby was ready to reactivate the coup plan within weeks

of his brother’s murder. There were others involved in the coup plan

to consider as well, such as Cuba’s leading journalist, Carlos Franqui.

According to CIA files, including a report from Hunt’s assistant, Bernard

Barker, Harry had helped Franqui leave Cuba and go to Paris with a large

sum of money ($200,000–$300,000), possibly with the aid of Manolo Ray.

Like Almeida’s family, Franqui hadn’t overtly defected, and it appeared

that he was just visiting Paris. There, Franqui would have been able to

favorably write about the coup and influence the world media when it

happened.5

Based on Bobby’s question to McCone, it’s clear that the Attorney

General was determined to find out who had killed his brother, even as

he struggled to deal with his own grief, family, and other government

matters. Bobby made at least two phone calls that day that showed

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where his suspicions lay: Journalist David Talbot writes that one was

to “Julius Draznin in Chicago, an expert on union corruption for the

National Labor Relations Board. [Bobby] asked Draznin to look into

whether there was any Mafia involvement in the killing of his brother.

Draznin knew this meant Sam Giancana.” Draznin would turn in his

report five days later, three days after Ruby had shot Oswald in the

basement of Dallas Police headquarters, on live television. Draznin’s

report” detailed Ruby’s labor racketeering activities and his penchant

for violence,” as well as Ruby’s “wide syndicate contacts.” As Talbot

notes, “later, Kennedy would remark that when he saw Ruby’s phone

records, ‘The list was almost a duplicate of the people I called before

the Rackets Committee.’”6 However, Draznin found nothing definite

because Bobby hadn’t told him about the plots to kill JFK in Chicago

and Tampa, the JFK-Almeida coup plan, or the earlier CIA-Mafia plots

with Giancana and Rosselli. Those were simply too sensitive to divulge,

even to Bobby’s own investigators. This situation would be repeated in

several secret investigations Bobby had associates undertake in the com-

ing years: They couldn’t investigate what they weren’t told about.

From the afternoon of November 22 forward, Bobby would remain

trapped by his desire to find out what had happened to his brother

without revealing the coup plan and exposing Almeida or his family to

harm. He also wanted to preserve Almeida as an asset in place, a willing

ally who might be ready to stage a coup at some future time. Historian

Thomas Borstelmann compared Commander Almeida to Colin Powell—

a good analogy that shows why Bobby, McCone, and the few others who

knew Almeida’s identity were so careful not to expose it.7 The odds were

overwhelming against the United States ever finding another Cuban

official with Almeida’s power and prestige who was willing to risk his

life to stage a coup, and even willing to put his own family under the

watchful eye of the CIA. Almeida was also agreeable to sharing power

with Bobby’s trusted Cuban exile leaders on a path eventually leading

to free elections, something any other dissident Cuban leader might not

be willing to do.

Avoiding exposing Almeida also meant continuing to cover up other

information, like the Chicago and Tampa assassination attempts. On

the afternoon of November 22, that was pretty much Bobby’s call to

make, and something he may have discussed with McCone, who no

doubt knew about the attempts because of their national security impli-

cations. One can only imagine how different history would have been

if Bobby had been willing to make those attempts, and their similarities

to Dallas, public on November 22. But that would have led to questions

about why the attempts had been kept secret when they occurred, and

to investigations about possible Cuban involvement, which could have

exposed the coup plan. With JFK gone, and Bobby having such hostile

relationships with both new president Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover, he

was in no position to conduct or control any significant covert investiga-

tion himself. Other organizations—from the FBI to the Secret Service to

local police and prosecutors—would control the handling of evidence,

witnesses, and testimony. Killing, or attempting to kill, a president was

not a federal crime in 1963, meaning Bobby had no real standing in the

matter as Attorney General. Therefore, the Chicago and Tampa attempts

were kept secret on November 22 for the same reasons they had been

kept secret in the first place; that lid of secrecy would be slammed shut

the following day, when word about Tampa started to leak in one small

article. Basically, the pattern set by Bobby and McCone that afternoon

would continue in the days to come, and would be adopted by other

officials as well.

John McCone left Bobby’s estate around 3:30 PM (Eastern), twenty

minutes before the FBI in Washington would be officially notified of

Oswald’s arrest.8 Either just before McCone left, or more likely soon after,

Bobby made another phone call that revealed whom Bobby suspected in

JFK’s assassination. Bobby’s instincts would prove quite accurate, and

one of the people he spoke with would play a crucial role, almost thirty

years later, in helping us vindicate Bobby’s initial suspicion.

As we mentioned earlier, Harry Williams had met with several CIA

officials—including CIA Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick and E.

Howard Hunt—on the morning of November 22, 1963, and was sup-

posed to resume their talks after lunch. Pulitzer Prize–winning jour-

nalist Haynes Johnson later wrote in the
Washington Post
that it was

“the most crucial of a series of secret meetings with top level CIA and

governmental people” that Harry had been having in recent months.

Haynes wrote that Harry was the Cuban exile leader closest to JFK’s

administration, and that Harry’s work with the Kennedys “had reached

an important point.”9 Harry confirmed to us that his friend Haynes

Johnson hadn’t been told about the JFK-Almeida coup plan, but Haynes

was close enough to Bobby and exile leaders like Artime to know that

something big was brewing.10 Haynes would have seen the Kennedys’

backing being given to Harry, and the large financial support going to

Artime and the Cuban exile troops at Fort Benning.

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Harry explained to us that “Bobby told me to be at this meeting,”

planned as Harry’s final high-level Washington meeting before he

headed to Cuba for the coup. During the morning session, Harry said

he felt that “we were really advancing.” Harry was set to go to Miami

that night and to Guantanamo the following day; from there he would

slip into Castro’s Cuba to meet with Almeida. Harry would remain in

Cuba to await the coup, which at that point would be only a few days

away. Either it would happen on December 1 (as one CIA memo noted)

or, as Harry told us, he might move it up by a day, to keep Artime from

jumping the gun.11 There was some flexibility regarding the date, since

Fidel could be shot either on the day he drove into Varadero Beach or

on the day he left.12

According to Harry, one of the topics discussed at the November 22

meeting was looking at “all the ways of eliminating Castro.” Seeds of a

misunderstanding might have been planted that morning, when Harry

told the CIA men that they should “get a professional” to kill Fidel.

Harry told them, “I am sure that you guys know more people, a hell of

a lot more people that could, you know, could do these things.” He also

told them that he had “a couple [of people] that could be used” to kill

Fidel. But when Harry used the term “professional,” he was not refer-

ring to a mob hit man, but to an experienced, professional soldier—in

this case, Almeida and one of his allies in the Cuban government. In any

event, unbeknownst to Harry, the CIA already had that aspect covered,

whether Almeida or one of his men personally pulled the trigger or

not. For months, the CIA had been training snipers in Florida, like the

Cuban exile sharpshooter we described previously. Harry, and probably

even Kirkpatrick, did not know that Johnny Rosselli was also part of

that training.

How much E. Howard Hunt knew at that point about Rosselli, and

Helms’s other unauthorized operations, is a matter of some speculation.

CIA memos withheld from Congressional investigators confirm that

Hunt’s best friend, Artime, had ties to the CIA-Mafia plots with Ros-

selli, and that “rumors of Mafia support of Artime had long pervaded

Artime’s organization.”13 Hunt’s assistant, CIA Agent Bernard Barker,

provided a steady stream of reports from Trafficante operative Frank