I have been focusing my thinking on my upcoming talk at the Wecht conference. Two weeks is not a long time to pull together the strains I have been exploring. I’m working on it.
This essay is just some thoughts on what seems to be an unnecessary conflict between “mafia did it” and “cia did it “ camps for the understanding of the assassination.
My own feeling is that anyone who denies the involvement of the Mafia cannot spell “Jack Ruby”. Anyone who denies the involvement of the CIA cannot spell “Counter Intelligence “.
Here is where my metaphor of describing the elephant seems to work pretty well. There is a group standing on the CIA side that knows that David Morales effectively admitted to the assassination and another group on the Mafia side of the elephant that knows that Carlos Marcello claimed credit.
There is a group on the CIA side that has high ideals about the role of the United States in the world and sees the assassination as a plot to eliminate a president who pursued those ideals.
There is another that understands that very powerful and ruthless mob leaders felt betrayed and persecuted by the Kennedy assault on organized crime and sought to end it with the president’s murder.
My own view is that any approach that is one-sided will be incomplete and a distraction.
The reason for choosing to look for an explanation that says “both” is to be found in the years long collaboration between the CIA and the Mafia to roll back Castro’s revolution in Cuba.
The collaboration centered on two figures. William Harvey for the CIA and Johnny Rosselli for the mafia. (Rosselli was even embedded for a while IN the CIA operation known as JM/WAVE in Florida that coordinated actions against Castro)
Signs of a joint plot include an amazing lineup of assassination tries in Tampa, Chicago, and then Dallas all of which included high buildings, open parades, and a fall guy in each.
Other signs of a joint plot include players with connections to both worlds like Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald.
CIA/Intelligence community involvement is obvious with Lee himself. He swam in a soup of intelligence connections. Just look at the Paines. Her sister worked for Office of Naval Intelligence no less. Her father interviewed for a job with the CIA. His father was a communist, his uncle wrote letters to the winner of the Stalin Peace Prize and his mother was best buddies with Allen Dulles’ mistress.
A final sign is the number of people who knew something significant who died suddenly/violently just as the spotlight of some inquiry or discovery shone on them. Lee Oswald, David Ferrie, Dorothy Kilgallen, Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli.
These comments are partly a heads up about a movie currently in pre-production - “Assassination”- starring Al Pacino and Shia LaBeouf; some other names have disappeared from recent notices. The current publicity describes it as a “mob did it” story centered on Giancana in Chicago. It remains to be seen just where they come out with the answer of “who did it?”
In my own screenplay, there is a collaboration between the Mafia and the Intelligence Community. I’ve gone through a couple of loops as to just how to shade it, and at the moment, I’m learning lots that I didn’t want to know about the Mafia.
Including that Carlos Marcello had a sign on his office door that read,
“Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”