The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (40 page)

The second case, the fatal shooting of a well-known businessman, Sol Landie, in Kansas City, Mo., on 22 November 1970, involved the recruitment, through several intermediaries, of four young Black men by members of the local La Cosa Nostra family. Landie had served as a witness in a Federal investigation of gambling activities directed by Kansas City organized crime leader Nicholas Civella. The men recruited for the murder did not know who had ultimately ordered the killing, were not part of the Kansas City syndicate, and had received instructions through intermediaries to make it appear that robbery was the motive for the murder. All of the assailants and two of the intermediaries were ultimately convicted.

The third case, the shooting of New York underworld leader Joseph Columbo before a crowd of 65,000 people in June 1971, was carried out by a young Black man with a petty criminal record, a nondescript loner who appeared to be alien to the organized crime group that had recruited him through various go-betweens. The gunman was shot to death immediately after the shooting of Columbo, a murder still designated as unsolved. (Seriously wounded by a shot to the head, Columbo lingered for years in a semiconscious state before he died in 1978.)

The committee found that these three cases, each of which is an exception to the general rule of organized crime executions, had identifiable similarities. Each case was solved, in that the identity of the perpetrator of the immediate act became known. In two of the cases, the assailant was himself murdered soon after the crime. In each case, the person who wanted the crime accomplished recruited the person or persons who made the attack through more than one intermediary. In each case, the person suspected of inspiring the violence was a member of, or connected to, La Cosa Nostra. In each case, the person or persons hired were not professional killers, and they were not part of organized criminal groups. In each case, the persons recruited to carry out the acts could be characterized as dupes or tools who were being used in a conspiracy they were not fully aware of. In each case, the intent was to insulate the organized crime connection, with a particular requirement for disguising the true identity of the conspirators, and to place the blame on generally nondescript individuals. These exceptions to the general rule of organized crime violence made it impossible for the committee to preclude, on the basis of an analysis of the method of the assassination, that President Kennedy was killed by elements of organized crime.

In its investigation into the possibility that organized crime elements were involved in the President’s murder, the committee examined various internal and external factors that bear on whether organized crime leaders would have considered, planned and executed an assassination conspiracy. The committee examined the decision-making process that would have been involved in such a conspiracy, and two primary propositions emerged. The first related to whether the national crime syndicate would have authorized and formulated a conspiracy with the formal consent of the commission, the ruling council of Mafia leaders. The second related to whether an individual organized crime leader, or possibly a small combination of leaders, might have conspired to assassinate the President through unilateral action, that is, without the involvement of the leadership of the national syndicate.

The most significant evidence that organized crime as an institution or group was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy was contained in the electronic surveillance of syndicate leaders conducted by the FBI in the early 1960s. As the President’s Crime Commission noted in 1967, and as this committee found through its review of the FBI surveillance, there was a distinct hierarchy and structure to organized crime. Decisions of national importance were generally made by the national commission, or at least they depended on the approval of the commission members. In 1963, the following syndicate leaders served as members of the commission: Vito Genovese, Joseph Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, and Thomas Lucchese of New York City; Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo; Sam Giancana of Chicago; Joseph Zerilli of Detroit; Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia and Raymond Patriarca of Providence. The committee’s review of the surveillance transcripts and logs, detailing the private conversations of the commission members and their associates, revealed that there were extensive and heated discussions about the serious difficulties the Kennedy administration’s crackdown on organized crime was causing.

The bitterness and anger with which organized crime leaders viewed the Kennedy administration are readily apparent in the electronic surveillance transcripts, with such remarks being repeatedly made by commission members Genovese, Giancana, Bruno, Zerilli, Patriarca and Magaddino. In one such conversation in May 1962, a New York Mafia member noted the intense Federal pressure upon the mob, and remarked, “Bob Kennedy won’t stop today until he puts us all in jail all over the country. Until the commission meets and puts its foot down, things will be at a standstill.” Into 1963, the pressure was continuing to mount, as evidenced by a conversation in which commission member Magaddino bitterly cursed Attorney General Kennedy and commented on the Justice Department’s increasing knowledge of the crime syndicates inner workings, stating, “They know everything under the sun. They know who’s back of it – they know there is a commission. We got to watch right now – and stay as quiet as possible.”

While the committee’s examination of the electronic surveillance program revealed no shortage of such conversations during that period, the committee found no evidence in the conversations of the formulation of any specific plan to assassinate the President. Nevertheless, that organized crime figures did discuss possible violent courses of action against either the President or his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – as well as the possible repercussions of such action – can be starkly seen in the transcripts.

One such discussion bears quoting at length. It is a conversation between commission member Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia and an associate Willie Weisburg, on 8 February 1962. In the discussion, in response to Weisburg’s heated suggestion that Attorney General Kennedy should be murdered, Bruno cautioned that Kennedy might be followed by an even worse Attorney General:

WEISBURG. See what Kennedy done. With Kennedy, a guy should take a knife, like all them other guys, and stab and kill the [obscenity], where he is now. Somebody should kill the [obscenity], I mean it. This is true. Honest to God. It’s about time to go. But I tell you something. I hope I git a week’s notice, I’ll kill. Right in the [obscenity] in the White House. Somebody’s got to rid of this [obscenity].

BRUNO. Look, Willie, do you see there was a king, do you understand. And he found out that everybody was saying that he was a bad king. This is an old Italian story. So, he figured. Let me go talk to the old woman. She knows everything. So he went to the old wise woman. So he says to her: “I came here because I want your opinion.” He says: “Do you think I’m a bad king?” She says: “No, I think you are a good king.” He says: “Well how come everybody says I’m a bad king?” She says: “Because they are stupid. They don’t know.” He says: “Well how come, why do you say I’m a good king?” “Well,” she said, “I knew your great-grandfather. He was a bad king. I knew your grandfather. He was worse. I knew your father. He was worse than them. You, you are worse than them, but your son, if you die, your son is going to be worse than you. So it’s better to be with you.” [All laugh.] So Brownell – former Attorney General – was bad. He was no [obscenity] good. He was this and that.

WEISBURG. Do you know what this man is going to do? He ain’t going to leave nobody alone.

BRUNO. I know he ain’t. But you see, everybody in there was bad. The other guy was good because the other guy was worse. Do you understand? Brownell came. He was no good. He was worse than the guy before.

WEISBURG. Not like this one.

BRUNO. Not like this one. This one is worse, right? If something happens to this guy … [laughs].

While Angelo Bruno had hoped to wait out his troubles, believing that things might get better for him as time went by, such was not to be the case during the Kennedy administration. The electronic surveillance transcripts disclosed that by mid 1963, Bruno was privately making plans to shut down his syndicate operations and leave America, an unprecedented response by a commission member to Federal law enforcement pressure.

Another member of the mob commission, Stefano Magaddino, voiced similar anger toward the President during that same period. In October 1963, in response to a Mafia family member’s remark that President Kennedy “should drop dead,” Magaddino exploded, “They should kill the whole family, the mother and father too. When he talks he talks like a mad dog, he says, my brother the Attorney General.”

The committee concluded that had the national crime syndicate, as a group, been involved in a conspiracy to kill the President, some trace of the plot would have been picked up by the FBI surveillance of the commission. Consequently, finding no evidence in the electronic surveillance transcripts of a specific intention or actual plan by commission members to have the President assassinated, the committee believed it was unlikely that it existed. The electronic surveillance transcripts included extensive conversations during secret meetings of various syndicate leaders, set forth many of their most closely guarded thoughts and actions, and detailed their involvement in a variety of other criminal acts, including murder. Given the far-reaching possible consequences of an assassination plot by the commission, the committee found that such a conspiracy would have been the subject of serious discussion by members of the commission, and that no matter how guarded such discussions might have been, some trace of them would have emerged from the surveillance coverage. It was possible to conclude, therefore, that it is unlikely that the national crime syndicate as a group, acting under the leadership of the commission, participated in the assassination of President Kennedy.

While there was an absence of evidence in the electronic surveillance materials of commission participation in the President’s murder, there was no shortage of evidence of the elation and relief of various commission members over his death. The surveillance transcripts contain numerous crude and obscene comments by organized crime leaders, their lieutenants, associates and families regarding the assassination of President Kennedy. The transcripts also reveal an awareness by some mob leaders that the authorities might be watching their reactions. On 25 November 1963, in response to a lieutenant’s remark that Oswald “was an anarchist … a Marxist Communist,” Giancana exclaimed, “He was a marksman who knew how to shoot.” On 29 November 1963, Magaddino cautioned his associates not to joke openly about the President’s murder, stating, “You can be sure that the police spies will be watching carefully to see what we think and say about this.” Several weeks later, during a discussion between Bruno and his lieutenants, one participant remarked of the late President, “It is too bad his brother Bobby was not in that car too.”

While the committee found it unlikely that the national crime syndicate was involved in the assassination, it recognized the possibility that a particular organized crime leader or a small combination of leaders, acting unilaterally, might have formulated an assassination conspiracy without the consent of the commission.

In its investigation of the national crime syndicate, the committee noted factors that could have led an organized crime leader who was considering an assassination to withhold it from the national commission. The committee’s analysis of the national commission disclosed that it was splintered by dissension and enmity in 1963. Rivalry between two blocks of syndicate families had resulted in a partial paralysis of the commission’s functions.

One significant reason for the disarray was, of course, the pressure being exerted by Federal law enforcement agencies. In the fall of 1963, Attorney General Kennedy noted, “ … in the past 2 years, at least three carefully planned commission meetings had to be called off because the leaders learned that we had uncovered their well-concealed plans and meeting places.”

The Government’s effort got an unprecedented boost from the willingness of Joseph Valachi, a member of the “family” of commission member Vito Genovese of New York, to testify about the internal structure and activities of the crime syndicate, a development described by Attorney General Kennedy as “the greatest intelligence breakthrough” in the history of the Federal program against organized crime. While it was not until August 1963 that Valachi’s identity as a Federal witness became public, the surveillance transcripts disclose that syndicate leaders were aware as early as the spring of 1963 that Valachi was cooperating with the Justice Department. The transcripts disclose that the discovery that Valachi had become a Federal informant aroused widespread suspicion and fear over the possibility of other leaks and informants within the upper echelons of the syndicate. The televised Senate testimony by Valachi led to considerable doubt by syndicate leaders in other parts of the country as to the security of commission proceedings, with Genovese rapidly losing influence as a result of Valachi’s actions.

The greatest source of internal disruption within the commission related to the discovery in early 1963 of a secret plan by commission member Joseph Bonanno to assassinate fellow members Carlo Gambino and Thomas Lucchese. Bonanno’s assassination plan, aimed at an eventual takeover of the commission leadership, was discovered after one of the gunmen Bonanno had enlisted, Joseph Columbo, informed on him to the commission. The Bonanno conspiracy, an unheard-of violation of commission rules, led to a long series of acrimonious deliberations that lasted until early 1964. Bonanno refused to submit to the judgment of the commission, and his colleagues were sharply divided over how to deal with his betrayal, Gambino recommending that Bonanno be handled with caution, and Giancana urging that he be murdered.