The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (9 page)

Soon after entering Texarkana, Van Laningham first saw the “little man,” a short, stout inmate named Carlos Marcello, who another
inmate said “runs this place.” Jack was surprised to see that even in prison, “Marcello went where he pleased and did what he wanted [and] was big time.” Van Laningham wrote that while he shared “a crowded dorm with a hundred other guys,” Marcello was one of the few lucky inmates who shared a two-man cell. In addition, Marcello’s “clothes were new and pressed and his shoes were shined. This guy was really sharp.”

Van Laningham had no idea who Marcello really was and knew nothing about his criminal empire. Jack hadn’t followed the news about Marcello’s recent trial, and he hadn’t paid attention to news reports about the House Select Committee six years earlier since he had no special interest in JFK’s assassination, though he’d liked JFK. He didn’t know that in the late 1970s the FBI and Justice Department had targeted Marcello as part of a larger undercover operation code-named BRILAB, which grew out of investigations related to several Watergate figures.

The BRILAB charges were obtained with the help of an earlier Bureau informant, a business associate of Marcello named Joe Hauser. Hauser wore a wire for the FBI when he met with Marcello in the late 1970s, a major accomplishment since the Bureau—for reasons that will shortly become clear—hadn’t wiretapped or bugged Marcello at all in the 1950s, 1960s, or most of the 1970s.
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Hauser’s information eventually resulted in multiple convictions for Marcello, who was finally sent to prison on April 15, 1983. The godfather was initially incarcerated at the US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. Twelve years earlier, Marcello had spent
a comfortable and unusually short sentence there, serving only five months when he was supposed to serve two years. The prison grounds at Springfield have been described as “park-like.” The prison was minimum security (level one), and after his original stay in the early 1970s, Marcello emerged in improved physical condition and ready for his most prosperous decade of crime.

However, in the 1980s things were different for Carlos Marcello. After a year at Springfield, he was moved to the far more secure and harsher level-three federal prison at Texarkana. The move may have been occasioned because officials suspected that Marcello was continuing to run his vast criminal empire from prison. He had left his younger brother Joe Marcello nominally in charge, but Carlos still made the major decisions for a domain that included all of Louisiana, much of Texas, and the lower half of Mississippi. In addition, Marcello had built his power by forging alliances with surrounding Mafia godfathers, such as the boss of the Kansas City mob and Trafficante in Florida, stretching his clout and influence even farther. Marcello’s recent trials and imprisonment—and the changing nature of organized crime in the 1980s—had no doubt taken a financial toll on his huge enterprise, which had grossed $2 billion a year at its peak but was still massive.

Jack Van Laningham didn’t know any of that when he first saw Marcello in prison, since the godfather was not then as well known as he is today. In 1985 there had as yet been no books devoted to—or TV documentaries about—Marcello. Instead, the media focused on high-profile mob figures such as John Gotti. But Van Laningham’s own observations, coupled with the comments and actions of other inmates, quickly made it clear to him that Marcello was a figure to be reckoned with, even in prison. Marcello received special gourmet food, wore the aforementioned pressed clothes, and even held sway
over work assignments and who got the coveted two-man cells instead of being placed in the massive dorms.

Van Laningham noticed that some “of the inmates hung around [Marcello], trying to get his attention.” They constantly gave Marcello their coveted phone time and tried to curry favor with the godfather since—as one inmate told Van Laningham—Marcello was “a good friend to have.”

However, Van Laningham stood in stark contrast to the other inmates. He didn’t seek favors from Marcello or even try to meet him. In addition, Van Laningham, like Marcello, was much older than the typical inmates at Texarkana, many of whom were in their twenties. In fact, Van Laningham was the second-oldest inmate at Texarkana, and Marcello—nineteen years older—was the oldest.

One day in March 1985, Van Laningham just happened to sit next to Marcello. The godfather surprised him by introducing himself: “Hello, I’m Carlos Marcello.” Marcello was holding a newspaper and asked if Van Laningham had heard anything about the trial of a political figure then in the news. They chatted briefly and then Marcello “got up to leave and said ‘If you need anything look me up.’”

The two men soon struck up an acquaintance, and not long after, Marcello had Van Laningham read him the newspaper each day. Because of Marcello’s age and relative lack of formal education, reading was difficult for the godfather. Marcello was interested not only in news about the political figure’s trial but also in reports of criminal activity from other parts of his empire. Since he was closer in age to Van Laningham than any other inmate, they had similar tastes in things like music. Like Marcello, Van Laningham was part of the “big band” generation, and neither was a fan of the rock music preferred by the other inmates. Instead they remembered—and could reminisce
with each other about—radio shows, movie palaces, World War II, and a dozen car companies no longer in business by the 1980s. In addition, the first crime both men had been arrested for was bank robbery, and while Marcello laughed at Jack’s hopelessly amateur effort, he admired the courage of anyone willing to rob a bank with nothing but a bag of laundry and a TV remote.

Also in Van Laningham’s favor were that he had lived in Tampa, the city run by Marcello’s closest mob ally, Trafficante, and that unlike the other inmates, he wasn’t constantly trying to curry favor with Marcello. Finally, Marcello felt he could trust Van Laningham because—much to Jack’s surprise—his power was such that he could show Jack his own prison file, which had the details of Jack’s arrest and personal history.

Not all the prison staff had been corrupted by Marcello’s influence, and one reported the growing closeness of Van Laningham and Marcello to an official at the prison. That word eventually reached Thomas Kimmel, a Unit Director at FBI headquarters in Washington whose territory included Texas.

I was the first to interview Thomas Kimmel about CAMTEX, and he confirmed and illuminated much of the material in the FBI file. In 1985 Thomas Kimmel was a twelve-year veteran of the Bureau. He had a special interest in organized crime and would eventually head the FBI’s Labor Racketeering Section. Kimmel’s territory included three prisons, and he was well aware of Marcello’s presence at Texarkana and the fact that the House Select Committee had focused attention on Marcello’s possible role in JFK’s murder. Kimmel knew he couldn’t sell FBI headquarters on an investigation focused on the assassination since the FBI had publicly maintained since soon after JFK’s shooting that there was no conspiracy.

Instead, Kimmel proposed to his superiors an operation designed to see how “Marcello was still running” his organization from prison, something the godfather had done during his brief 1971 incarceration. FBI headquarters approved, and Kimmel became “the driving force behind” the new CAMTEX operation targeting Marcello at Texarkana. Kimmel learned of Van Laningham’s friendship with Marcello when he was already looking for a way to get to the godfather. Kimmel could use Van Laningham to pierce the normally impenetrable wall of secrecy that surrounded the hypercautious godfather.

For decades, most former FBI officials were reluctant to talk in public about anything contrary to the FBI’s long-held official position that a lone, unaided Oswald assassinated JFK. However, there were several reasons Kimmel was willing to go on record as the first FBI veteran ever interviewed about CAMTEX and Marcello’s confession. First, since so many pages of uncensored files had already been released, Kimmel agreed to discuss what was in those files. After all, the daring CAMTEX operation had been successful in some ways, yet the public, Congress, and even most in the Bureau knew nothing about it. In addition, Kimmel had seen how excessive secrecy could actually hinder national security. In 1999—two years prior to the arrest of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent and Soviet spy—Kimmel tried to alert FBI Director Louis Freeh about a possible “mole” in the Bureau. His warning was ignored, and FBI officials stonewalled his efforts and refused him access to important files, as detailed by the
New York Times
and
60 Minutes
.
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For all those reasons, Kimmel agreed to talk
with me, and he even appeared in my 2009 Discovery Channel special that also featured Van Laningham.

Kimmel used a “terrific” FBI agent based in Texas as one of those to handle the operation for him locally. (I have interviewed that agent, but he asked not to be identified.) Completing the team was an older FBI agent, Tom Kirk, who was assigned to work undercover with Jack Van Laningham. Before meeting him, Jack was called to his cell block manager’s office and “asked if I would help the Feds.” Jack was reluctant, but he was told that on visiting day at the prison, someone would talk with him. When visiting day came around, FBI agent Tom Kirk posed as an old friend of Van Laningham’s. He pretended to be a shady businessman looking for opportunities, even if they weren’t legal. Using that cover, Kirk tried to talk Van Laningham into becoming an informant for the FBI.

When Kirk first approached him, Van Laningham was initially very apprehensive about the operation. But the agent pressed him, saying, “It would be a great help to the FBI if [he] would become an informant against Carlos Marcello.” Jack said that Kirk then “started telling me things about Marcello that were not nice at all, [saying] he would have a book sent in to me that would tell me all about ‘the little man.’”

The book, about organized crime, had fewer than a dozen pages about Carlos Marcello, since only a few books at that time had even that much information about the godfather. After receiving it, Jack “read up on Carlos Marcello [and] all the things that this man had done. He had raped the people of Louisiana, he had bribed and cheated and if that did not work, he resorted to murder. New Orleans was his home, and he ruled it with an iron hand . . . he was into everything crooked [at] one time or the other, and had made millions running
the Mafia in Louisiana.” Van Laningham said that “the book . . . had some things in it that led me to believe that [Marcello] was responsible for the murder [of JFK].” Surprisingly, Van Laningham revealed that “I read pages of the book to Marcello and he would listen, completely engrossed. The only thing he said to me” at that time “was that he had been kidnapped” on the Kennedys’ orders “and that he hated the Kennedys.” These and many other quotes from Jack Van Laningham come directly from his declassified FBI file, from letters and summaries soon after the events described that he either wrote by hand or later had a trusted inmate type up for him.

The information in the book Kirk sent had the effect that Kimmel had hoped for. Van Laningham said, “The next time Kirk came to see me, I told him that I would help if I could.” Van Laningham said there were three conditions:

1. That “the FBI would have to protect me, if I got in trouble.”

2. That a small amount of “money would be [put] up on my [prison] account.”

3. The most important: that he would receive an early release for helping the FBI with its dangerous undercover operation.

Van Laningham “was convinced that no matter what the FBI said, I must be careful or I would be dead. If Marcello found out that I was working with the FBI I would not have time to call for help.” Van Laningham would eventually be proven right, but that was still several years in the future.

Once Van Laningham became an FBI informant, he continued growing closer to Marcello, who talked more and more to Jack about
his array of criminal activities. After a few weeks of seeing Kirk on visiting days, Van Laningham casually introduced Kirk to Marcello, noting that “Kirk thought that it was great that he could meet Marcello.” FBI files show that Van Laningham and Kirk gradually tried to draw Marcello into a series of illegal business schemes based upon ongoing criminal operations that Marcello had revealed to Jack. Marcello didn’t go for any of the schemes for various reasons, including the innate caution he had developed during his more than fifty years of successful criminal activity.

To get Van Laningham even closer to Marcello, Jack wrote, “[T]he FBI asked the [prison’s] Unit Manager to move me into Marcello’s room with him. Some days later, this was accomplished.” Jack now shared Marcello’s two-man cell. Van Laningham was soon told by Kirk that reports about his work were going all the way up to the US Attorney General, Edwin Meese.

To fill the long hours in their cell, Marcello began opening up even more to Jack, giving him fatherly advice while revealing more of his crimes and even telling Jack his hopes for the future. In contrast to the shady deals Kirk had proposed to Marcello, Van Laningham learned that “the only thing Marcello was really interested in was getting out of prison. He had a standing offer with any attorney of a million dollars if they could get him released from prison.”

That knowledge gave Kimmel a new goal for his operation, and Van Laningham soon told Marcello a new cover story: that Kirk had a friend in the Bureau of Prisons who could transfer Marcello to a much more comfortable prison—and eventually do even more—for the right price. The new CAMTEX plan was to get Marcello to pay a bribe to Kirk to get to a nicer and less-secure level-two prison and then another bribe to get to a level-one “country club” prison. Finally—once
Marcello saw that Kirk’s “friend” could get results—Marcello would get his family or close associates to pay a $1 million bribe to get him “released.” After payment of the third and final bribe, the trap would be sprung: Marcello and his associates would be charged. The hope was that either Marcello—facing essentially a life sentence—a family member, or an associate would “flip” at that point and start providing information to the FBI in return for reduced or dropped charges. But even before the FBI’s plan got to the final stage, the agents would also learn how Marcello communicated with his subordinates.