Reclaiming History (280 page)

But far more importantly, for those who believe that Trafficante was behind Kennedy’s murder, and cite his alleged statement to Aleman as support, why in the world would Trafficante confide such a monstrous murder plot to Aleman, who not only wasn’t a fellow mafioso, but also was someone he had never met before? It makes no sense at all. The HSCA said it “found it difficult to comprehend why Trafficante, if he was planning or had personal knowledge of an assassination plot, would have revealed or hinted at such a sensitive matter to Aleman,”
*
particularly, it said, when Trafficante had a reputation for being cautious and discreet. (FBI agent Jim Kenney, who investigated Trafficante for fifteen years, said in a November 17, 1992,
Frontline
documentary on the mob that “our investigation of Santo Trafficante throughout the years proved to be frustrating in that he maintained a low profile and he was very, very circumspect about whom he would talk with and meet with.”)
⁶²
The HSCA ended up rejecting Aleman’s story, concluding that “there were substantial factors that called into question the validity of Aleman’s account.”
⁶³

On the one hand, if Trafficante were actually behind the assassination, his confiding such a murder plot to Aleman is, as indicated, nonsensical and not worthy of belief. But this doesn’t mean he didn’t say what Aleman said he did. By George Davis’s own admission to George Crile in the
Washington Post
, “José’s a real nice fellow. He’s a reliable individual.” Even the HSCA, which did not accept Aleman’s story, said he was a “reputable person who did not seek to publicize his allegations.” Moreover, what would Aleman possibly have to gain by making up such a story? It seems like he could only hurt himself. And FBI agent Paul Scranton’s telling the
Post
’s George Crile III that he did not want to comment on Aleman’s allegation without clearance because “I wouldn’t want to do anything to embarrass the Bureau” certainly sounds, as least to a layman unfamiliar with the practice of FBI agents, as if Aleman
did
tell them what he claims Trafficante told him, and they either didn’t put it in their report, or they did and no action was taken. However, Kelly, a thirty-year veteran of the bureau, told me, “Don’t read too much into those words of Scranton’s. It’s a standard response by agents, even when there’s nothing that could embarrass the bureau. I’ve used almost those exact words myself many times in my career. Don’t forget that FBI policy back then, and I believe even today, is that only three people in a field office are authorized to say anything of substance to the media: the agent in charge of the field office [special agent-in-charge], the assistant agent-in-charge, and the press liaison guy.”
⁶⁴

The situation seems irreconcilable unless, taking into account the problems of communication between Aleman and Trafficante (if, in fact, Trafficante spoke to Aleman, as Aleman suggests, in English) as well as between Aleman and the two agents, one of whom spoke no Spanish, one concludes that, as the HSCA said, “it is possible that Trafficante may have been expressing a personal opinion, ‘The President ought to be hit.’”
⁶⁵

There are several parenthetical observations to be made about the Trafficante-Aleman incident. One is that even if Trafficante said precisely what Aleman said he did, as discussed elsewhere in this book, there is absolutely no credible evidence that Trafficante was connected in any way with the assassination, so his utterance to Aleman wouldn’t have any relevance to this case. Furthermore, although FBI electronic surveillance of Trafficante was limited, its on-site surveillance of him was very extensive. In a letter to J. Edgar Hoover in 1967, Frank Ragano, Trafficante’s lawyer, complained of the absolutely suffocating surveillance of “Mr. Trafficante and members of his family [that] has been going on since 1961,” and beseeched Hoover to order a stop to it. Ragano wasn’t just talking. Not only did he give Hoover physical descriptions of the agents, but he also provided the license plate numbers of four of their cars.
⁶⁶
To believe that someone under this type of “surveillance,” as Ragano put it, would nonetheless decide to order the murder of the president of the United States is simply ridiculous.

Additionally, as alluded to earlier, when HSCA staff investigator Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Aleman on March 12, 1977, a year and a half before his HSCA testimony on September 27, 1978, he wrote, “[Aleman] also said that Trafficante brought up Jimmy Hoffa’s name and said that Hoffa would never forgive the Kennedys for what they did to him. Aleman said he got the impression that Trafficante was hinting that Hoffa was going to make the hit, not him, and that Kennedy would never make it to the election because of Hoffa. This, says Aleman, was the one aspect of the conversation with Trafficante that [
Washington Post
reporter George] Crile did not properly put into perspective in his piece; otherwise, the piece was very accurate.”
⁶⁷
*

Finally, as indicated earlier, the HSCA reviewed all the reports that Davis and Scranton prepared on their contacts with Aleman and found no mention of the Trafficante threat. Therefore, if Hoover had received information in a report from Davis and Scranton about the threat, this necessarily means he had to order the destruction of these reports and the preparation of new ones, thus automatically bringing into the cover-up not only the earlier mentioned chain of command, but Davis and Scranton as well. The extremely high improbability of all of this happening is one of the reasons why I believe that if Aleman told Davis and Scranton about the Trafficante threat, they did not put it in their report or reports.

But
if
Aleman told FBI agents Davis and Scranton what Trafficante allegedly told him, and
if
they put this in their report, and
if
the report reached Hoover, and
if
Hoover, believing the mob would in fact kill Kennedy, did not furnish this information to the Secret Service or do anything else about it because he was hoping the mob would kill Kennedy, thereby avoiding his impending compulsory retirement, Hoover, even though the mob did not, in fact, end up killing Kennedy, would, as indicated, be an incredible villain. I am very, very confident that this scenario did not happen. However, based on the existing record, there is no way that one can dismiss the notion completely out of hand. I mean, to retain power, men have done much worse things than stand by and let someone else commit a murder that redounds to their benefit.

One footnote to the Trafficante-Aleman issue: Contrary to Mark North’s conclusion that if the assumed facts set forth in his scenario were true, they would make Hoover guilty of treason,
⁶⁸
they would not. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
⁶⁹
Neither clause would apply to Hoover’s alleged conduct, the courts defining “enemy” as a “foreign power,” and ruling that aid to the foreign country has to take place while the United States is “in a state of open hostility” with the other country (i.e., while we’re at war).
⁷⁰

T
he main contention by the fringe element of the conspiracy community is that Hoover actually conspired to have Kennedy murdered (unlike Mark North’s allegation of passivity on Hoover’s part). But they present not the tiniest sliver of evidence to support their wild allegation. However, because Hoover is such a central figure in the assassination saga, a very brief profile of who J. Edgar Hoover was, and how he ran his empire, is called for.

J. Edgar Hoover, since his appointment as FBI director in 1924, at once formed and effectively ran perhaps the finest, most incorruptible law enforcement agency in the world, while being personally beset by obsessions, paranoia, and insecurities that would run off the edge of the paper of any psychiatric report analyzing him. Just one illustrative example: In 1959 in California, Hoover’s chauffeur-driven car was struck from behind while in the process of making a left turn, and he was shaken up. Thereafter, on instructions from Hoover, his drivers had to take him to his destination without making a left turn.
⁷¹

Hoover, it seemed, believed he was incapable of error as the FBI’s director, something akin to the doctrine of papal infallibility in the Catholic Church. As former FBI agent Joseph L. Schlott wrote, “In the FBI under Mr. Hoover, you had to work on the premise that the Director was infallible.” Indeed, Hoover himself would only admit to having been conned twice in his life (not in FBI business, naturally), “once by a door to door salesman who sold him black sawdust for his flower bed as pure manure, and once by the Birdman of Alcatraz, who sold him a sparrow dyed yellow as a canary.”
⁷²
*

Above all, Hoover was a megalomaniac—he had to be the only person in the FBI who received the acclamation of the public. When the most famous G-man ever (other than Hoover), Melvin Purvis, who most believed to be the key agent in the tracking down and killing of John Dillinger (the bureau’s “Public Enemy Number One”) in the alley behind the Biograph Theater in Chicago in 1934, received national attention and fame, Hoover could not tolerate it. Purvis, who at one time was a big favorite of Hoover’s, and was the recipient of several personal letters from him, suddenly became persona non grata at the bureau. Hoover had told Purvis in one letter, “Well, son, keep a stiff upper lip and get Dillinger for me and the world is yours.” But after Purvis became widely known as “the man who got Dillinger,” he was demoted to a desk job in the Chicago office and forced to resign the following year.
†
In Hoover’s 1938 book,
Persons in Hiding
, he devotes much space to Dillinger (more than the likes of notorious outlaws like Ma Barker, Baby Face Nelson, and Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, all FBI prey),
‡
the most famous “person in hiding” the FBI has ever brought to ground, and the one about whose celebrated capture the bureau has always taken the greatest pride. Yet remarkably, in his telling of the Dillinger capture, Hoover does not even mention Melvin Purvis. In fact, the name Melvin Purvis doesn’t appear anywhere in the book, even though Purvis was also very instrumental in bringing to an end the career in crime of Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd.
⁷³

It is common in nonfiction for authors to ignore the accomplishments of competitors or people they don’t like (for whatever reason). When they do this, their books, in which they have an obligation to rise above their pettiness for the historical record, lose credibility. Because of Hoover’s pettiness, I read his book, not just the part on Dillinger, with a jaundiced eye.

Hoover not only easily controlled, in a dictatorial fashion, his entire agency, but also induced enormous fear in (and hence, largely controlled) every major public figure—including President John F. Kennedy—who ever strayed in his personal life. His gunpowder? The very well-known secret dossiers (“Hoover’s files” they were known as) he kept in two file cabinets behind the desk of his secretary, Helen Gandy, on wayward congressmen, diplomats, celebrities, and so on.
⁷⁴
William Sullivan, a former assistant director of the FBI under Hoover, said that the dossiers or files did not necessarily include references to “sex alone, but financial irregularities or political chicanery. He gathered all the dirt that was present on people in high-ranking positions…Knowledge is powerful, and he had knowledge of the most damaging kind, knowledge of people’s misbehavior.”
⁷⁵
Emanuel Celler, for years chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, liked and respected Hoover, but said Hoover “had a dossier on every member of Congress and every member of the Senate.” Though he could not speak for the Senate, he said, “The members of the House were aware of this” and many “had a lot of skeletons in their closet…That’s what made him so feared.” Celler said, “There’s no question in my mind” that Hoover tapped the telephones of congressmen.
⁷⁶
Author Victor S. Navasky wrote that “the Director, with the FBI files as his private library, [was the]
de facto
caretaker to the nation’s reputations.”
⁷⁷

The brimming contents of these files were gathered by Hoover’s agents through the wiretapping of telephones (which was unlawful but routinely authorized for years by the U.S. attorney general in national security cases) or “bugging” (installing, usually by criminal trespass, hidden microphones in people’s homes, apartments, etc., to pick up nontelephonic verbal communications), called “black bag jobs” in the FBI. Even where national security wasn’t involved, as was frequently the case, it was widely reported that Hoover regularly ordered telephone taps (wiretaps) and bugging without the approval of the attorney general,
⁷⁸
who had no legal authority to allow them anyway.

Hoover’s abuse of the national security exception was notorious, perhaps the most prominent example being his secret Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a program that took Hoover’s FBI far beyond its sole mandate to enforce federal law. Deciding he knew what was best for America, its values, and its culture, Hoover’s COINTELPRO was a series of covert missions starting in 1956 (to 1971) to identify, penetrate, and neutralize what Hoover decided were subversive elements in the United States, including, Hoover believed, civil rights groups, black liberation and antiwar groups, and the political Left, mostly American Communists. However, the first group COINTELPRO operated against, ironically, was a group on the Far Right, the Ku Klux Klan. A favorite tool of COINTELPRO was to fabricate and spread pernicious rumors and write anonymous letters with false accusations about individual members of these groups. A report from the House Select Committee on Intelligence (“Pike Committee Report”) in 1976 said that in the process, “careers were ruined, friendships severed, reputations sullied, businesses bankrupted and, in some cases, lives endangered.”
⁷⁹
A typical example of COINTELPRO: The bureau learned, through electronic surveillance, of a civil rights leader’s plan in 1964 to attend a reception at the Soviet mission to the United Nations honoring a Soviet author. The FBI arranged to have news photographers at the scene to photograph him entering the Soviet mission.
⁸⁰