The Kennedy Half-Century (109 page)

76
. Morley, “Morley v. CIA,”
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/morley-v-cia-jfk-at-issue-in-federal-court-next-week/#more-3023
 [accessed February 18, 2013].

77
. Historian David M. Barrett’s excellent study of CIA explores the agency’s complicated relationship with Congress during the height of the Cold War. See
The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).

78
. In 1975, Senator Frank Church held widely publicized Senate hearings into possible abuses by the CIA. The reports from these hearings can be found on the Assassination Archives and Research Center website:
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm
 [accessed July 28, 2011].

79
. Harry Truman, “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,”
Washington Post
, December 22, 1963.

80
. The CIA’s unwillingness, or perhaps inability, to shed light on another strange story raises additional questions about the agency’s links to 11/22. In 1977 an assassination researcher, Mary Ferrell, discovered a CIA document (dated April 1, 1964) that included a request from the French government for help in finding a French terrorist named Jean Souetre. According to the document, Souetre—a member of the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS), a right-wing organization responsible for plotting several assassination attempts against French president Charles de Gaulle—had been in Forth Worth, Texas, during JFK’s visit and “[w]ithin forty-eight hours of Kennedy’s death … was picked up by U.S. authorities in Texas” and “expelled from the United States.” There is no official record of who apprehended Souetre or which agency handled his deportation proceedings. Souetre denied involvement during a 1983 interview with a reporter, but suggested that a former French intelligence agent named Michel Mertz may have been in Fort Worth using his (Souetre’s) name as an alias. Souetre occasionally used Mertz’s name as an alias, as well as the name Michel Roux. Oddly enough, the real Michel Roux had been in Forth Worth on 11/22 visiting
friends. For more information on this tangled tale, see Peter Kross,
JFK: The French Connection
(Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2012), Brad O’Leary and L. E. Seymour,
Triangle of Death: The Shocking Truth About the Role of South Vietnam and the French Mafia in the Assassination of JFK
(Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2003), and Henry Hurt,
Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation Into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Henry Holt, 1985), 414–19.

81
. According to Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, the CIA “claim[ed] the tapes of Oswald’s calls were erased shortly after his visits, and before JFK’s assassination” (
Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009), 214). But President Johnson’s postassassination conversation with J. Edgar Hoover disproves this. See “Telephone Conversation between the President and J. Edgar Hoover, 23 November 1963,” Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=807&relPageId=2
 [accessed October 10, 2011]. No one disputes that the CIA recorded several conversations in Mexico City that the agency believed included Lee Oswald. In addition to Hoover, there are others who insist the tapes were not erased. W. David Slawson and William Coleman, two lawyers for the Warren Commission, said that the CIA played the Oswald tapes for them several months after the assassination. See John Newman, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City,”
Frontline
,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/conspiracy/newman.html#
 [accessed October 10, 2011]. But at some undefined point, possibly in the 1980s, the tapes were apparently either lost or destroyed. Transcripts of the tapes have survived. See CIA transcripts from Mexico City, September 28 (11:51 A.M.) and October 1 (10:30 A.M.), 1963, CIA January 1994 release (5 brown boxes), Oswald box 15b, folder 56, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, and
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/The_Mexico_City_Tapes
 [accessed October 10, 2011]. A definitive answer on the status of the tapes might be found in documents scheduled for release in 2017. See Associated Press, “Evidence Indicates ‘Oswald’ Tapes Survived,”
Dallas Morning News
, November 22, 1999.

82
. Newman,
Oswald and the CIA
, 364.

83
. “The Mexico City Tapes,” Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/The_Mexico_City_Tapes
 [accessed May 13, 2011]; Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 275–77; “LBJ-Hoover 11-23-63,”
History Matters
,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/audio/LBJ-Hoover_11-23-63.htm
 [accessed May 13, 2011].

84
. At the height of the Watergate scandal, Senate investigators discovered that President Nixon kept a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office. The investigators immediately subpoenaed Nixon’s tapes and discovered an 18½-minute gap in a critical conversation between President Nixon and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, concerning an illegal break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex in June 1972. Nixon’s loyal longtime secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that she accidentally erased at least some of the tape (about five minutes) while transcribing the conversation. “No one on the president’s staff offered an explanation to account for the remaining thirteen and a half minutes.” Many believe that President Nixon personally listened to the tape, alone, and possibly erased part of the conversation, intentionally or otherwise, before it was turned over to the Senate. Granted, this is not a certainty and cannot be proven. Jonathan Roscoe of the Richard M. Nixon Library wrote us: “[T]here are some pieces of testimony that suggest the president listened to portions of the White House Tapes
conversation containing the 18.5 minute gap. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say for certain which parts and for how long he listened.” E-mail from Jonathan Roscoe, October 18, 2011. Also see Keith W. Olson,
Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 127.

85
. “Formation of the Warren Commission,” Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Formation_of_the_Warren_Commission
 [accessed May 13, 2011]; “The Fourteen Minute Gap [based on a film of the same name by Tyler Weaver],” Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/The_Fourteen_Minute_Gap
 [accessed May 13, 2011]. The historian Max Holland points out that “the Johnson Library and the National Archives and Records Administration hired a private contractor, the Cutting Corporation of Maryland, to try to recover an audible version of this conversation. After three months’ work, the Cutting Corporation reported that the IBM magnetic belt had been erased and an audible recording could not be retrieved.” Max Holland,
The Kennedy Assassination Tapes
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 69.

86
. Jefferson Morley, “Did the CIA Destroy An Oswald Tape?” JFK Facts, January 9, 2013,
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/experts/what-happened-to-the-tape-of-oswald-in-mexico-city/
 [accessed January 11, 2013].

9. ROUNDING UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE ASSASSINATION’S PUZZLE PALACE

1
. “John Moss Whitten,” Spartacus Educational website,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwhitten.htm
 [accessed May 16, 2011]; Jefferson Morley, “The Good Spy,”
Washington Monthly
, December 2003,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.morley.html
 [accessed May 16, 2011]; and “Newseum to Host Warren Commission Critic Who Got Played By a CIA Spymaster,” JFK Facts, April 4, 2013,
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/newseum-to-host-edward-epstein-a-warren-commission-critic-suckered-by-the-cia/
 [accessed April 8, 2013].

2
. Luciano, who was jailed during the war for running a prostitution ring, also encouraged his Italian associates to help the American army during the invasion of Sicily. The federal government later rewarded Luciano by paroling and deporting him to Italy where he ultimately established a lucrative narcotics trade. Dan E. Moldea,
The Hoffa Wars: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa
(New York: S.P.I. Books, 1993), 41–42.

3
. Mark North,
Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991), 13–17, 181–89.

4
. A private investigator, Edward Becker, claimed he heard Marcello make this threat. The FBI dismissed his story, and so did Carlos Marcello. Speaking before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Marcello insisted that he would never have held a meeting at the location named by Becker—an estate Marcello used for duck hunting. Also, the HSCA decided it was “unlikely that an organized crime leader personally involved in an assassination plot would discuss it with anyone other than his closest lieutenants, although he might be willing to discuss it more freely prior to a serious decision to undertake such an act.” See George Lardner, Jr., “Investigator Detailed Mafia Leaders’ Threat Against Kennedy,”
Washington Post
, July 21, 1979.

5
. Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann,
Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination
(Berkeley,
CA: Counterpoint, 2009), xi-xii; Anthony Summers,
The Kennedy Conspiracy
(London: Sphere Books, 1989), 197–200.

6
. Tim Weiner,
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
(New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 263.

7
. The official memorandum on this incident reads: “On 27 November 1963, Sympathizer/73 showed Richard R. Consley a memorandum which the Dutch Foreign Office had written to SYMPATHIZER. This memo was dated 25 November 1963, and it reported a conversation which one Mr. SLOT, a member of the Dutch Foreign Office, had had with Ricardo SANTOS, 3rd Secretary of the Cuban Embassy, at a reception given by the Soviet Ambassador on 7 November 1963. Mr. SLOT reportedly asked SANTOS a question concerning the attacks made against the Cuban mainland by Cuban refugees. SANTOS’ reply to this question was, ‘Mr. SLOT, just wait and you will see what we can do. It will happen soon.’ Asked by Mr. SLOT to be more specific about what would happen soon, SANTOS merely replied, ‘Just wait, just wait.’ The memorandum goes on to say that SANTOS [had] a brother living in the U.S. His name and address [were] not known, but he and SANTOS [wrote] to each other regularly. This brother [was] reportedly pro-CASTRO, but went to the U.S. at the insistence of his wife, who [was] ‘conservative.’ The subject matter of the letters between the brothers is reportedly nothing more than ‘family affairs.’” Source: “Memo: For the Record 27 Nov 63,” Record Group 263, Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald, Box 14, Folder “OSW1:V7,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland. There is another cable from the CIA to presidential aide McGeorge Bundy dated November 28, 1963: “Our station in the Hague has reported that on 23 November 1963, a local Castroite named Maria Snethlage talked to Third Secretary Ricardo Santos of the Cuban Embassy in the Hague and said that she knew the ‘Mr. Lee’ (
sic
) who murdered President Kennedy. She characterized ‘Lee’ as a man full of hate and violence, and speculated that he had been ‘misused by a group.’ She said she had written to Gibson (undoubtedly Richard Gibson, U.S. citizen of Lausanne, Switzerland, born 13 May 1935, a Castro sympathizer, who had visited the Netherlands recently and was in contact both with the Soviet ambassador and the Cuban embassy). Later on 23 November, Maria Snethlage talked again to Third Secretary Santos and said that, ‘Mr. Lee of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee’ had been slandered. It was another person, ‘named Lee Oswald,’ who had done it. Snethlage is reported to have been [in] Cuba in January and again in May 1963.” Source: “CIA to McGeorge Bundy and U. Alexis Johnson, 28 November 1963,” Record Group 263, Box 4, Russ Holmes Work File, Folder “JFK-RH02:F040B,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

8
. Memo from Richard Helms to Lee Rankin [undated], “Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald,” Box 51, Record Group 263, Folder “V54 OSW 14,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland; “Memo: For the Record,” November 27, 1963, “Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald, Box 14, Record Group 263, Folder “OSW 1: V7,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Memo from Stockholm Embassy to McGeorge Bundy, December 9, 1963, “Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald,” Box 3, Record Group 263, Folder “OSW3: V7,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Memo from CIA to White House and Secret Service, February 22, 1964, “Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald,” Box 15, Record Group 263, Folder “OSW6: V8,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Memo from CIA Director to McGeorge Bundy, November 29, 1963, “Russ Holmes Work File,” Box 4, Record Group 263, Folder “JFK-RH02:040A,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

9
. “Agency Disseminations to the FBI Et Al Regarding Rumors and Allegations Regarding
President Kennedy Assassination,” Box 81, Record Group 233, Folder 11, Archives II, College Park, Maryland; “Memo to the director of the CIA from [12] at Station C/WH4,” November 30, 1963, “Russ Holmes Work File,” Box 12, Record Group 263, Folder “JFK-RH04:F108-II,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Max Holland, “The Demon in Jim Garrison,”
Wilson Quarterly
25, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 10–17.