The DEath of JFK: Were Elements of the Government Involved

Most people who deny the official assassination story’s validity believe that elements in the United States government were behind Kennedy’s death. Professor James W. Douglass has made the strongest case for the C.I.A. and Pentagon having motives to do away with the president. The C.I.A. expected that the Bay of Pigs Invasion could be used to draw Kennedy into a full scale war with Cuba. Kennedy resisted and vowed “to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Kennedy was also angry that the Joint Chiefs had lied to him in connection with the invasion. The military urged a first strike doctrine upon Kennedy and urged a surprise attack upon the Soviet Union. He angrily rejected the suggestion. In National Security Action Memo 263 he ordered the withdrawl of $1,000 troops from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the “bulk” of US personnel out of that country by the end of 1965.

The military resented Kennedy’s refusal to bomb missile emplacements and General Charles P. Cabel, brother of the mayor of Dallas, called Kennedy a “traitor.” JFK found that the military was refusing to implement his order and that Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was also obstructing it. Kennedy and Nakita Khrushchev were involved in a secret correspondence about ramping down the arms race, and C.I.A. and military knew about this, claiming later he was leaking classified information to the Soviets. In June, 1963 he spoke at American University about the need abolish “the weapons of war” and to end the arms race. Kennedy, known as a cold war hawk, was rapidly reversing his ground. In NASC 239, he instructed his national security advisors to begin preparations for a nuclear test ban treaty and eventual disarmament through a series of US initiatives.

The agency people would probably have been known that the Kennedy administration was beginning to talk to the Cuban government through Ambassador William Attwood, Kennedy’s Harvard roommate, an asset controlled by Henry Cabot Lodge, then ambassador to South Vietnam, and through a US advisor to the UN. Kennedy had decided to normalize relations with Cuba but was continuing sabotage efforts that were coordinated by a subcommittee of the NSC. On the day of Kennedy’s death, Attwood wrote, ““If the C.I.A. did find out what we were doing, this would have trickled down to the lower echelon of activists, and Cuban exiles, and…. I can understand why they would have reacted so violently.”

Elements within the C.I.A. were working with Cuban Army Major Rolando Cubela, who was unhappy with growing Soviet influence, to overthrow Castro. Helms sent Desmond FitzGerald to meet with the major, claiming to be Kennedy’s personal representative. Arthur Schlesinger , Jr, who worked on Latin American affairs in the White House denied that Kennedy knew anything about the Cubela initiative. Schlesinger saw it as a’studied attempt to subvert national policy.” Cubela was employed as an asset, but he refused to take a lie detector test. Some thought he was a “dangle” or double agent. In October, 1963 he asked the C.I.A. for a high powered rifle, but the C.I.A. insisted he use poison to terminate Castro. Cubela was fired in 1965. The agency found he was working secretly with Santo Trafficanti, who was feeding Castro information in hopes of recovering his casinos.

The Army had an anti-Kennedy think tank at the American University called “Camelot,” and another nest of anti-Kennedy people was Operation Mongoose, a C.I.A. unit in Miami dedicated to killing Castro. It had a stable of capable hit men. That team probably began in 1960 when Paul Helliwell was transferred to the Miami station. Through trade in guns and drugs he had financed various opereations, such as the Guatamala coup in 1954, and was now called upon to pick up the bills for anti-Cuban programs. He met Clines and Shackley in Miami, but he was not in charge of the operation itself. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy placed General Edward Lansdale in charge of Operation Mongoose, the effort to kill Castro and disrupt Cuba.

Before the assassination, there were complaints about C.I.A. abuse of power and columnist Arthur Krock wrote in October, 1963 that if there were coup it “would come from the C.I.A. and not the Pentagon.” He referred to the agency as a “malignancy” on the American government.

In the view of the army brass and C.I.A. people, Kennedy had made terrible blunders in planning to bring 1000 troops home from Vietnam by Christmas and by signing National Security Action Memorandum 263, which would reorient US policy from Asia to Europe.

After the Bay of Pigs failure the US agents and Cuban exiles who were involved were angry with President Kennedy and determined to oust Castro from power. Initially with the blessings of the government, they raided Cuba, sent in arms, and even attacked Russian ships. Around July, 1962, Kennedy attempted to shut down these operations while keeping alive his effort to assassinate Castro. That project, Mongoose, was under C.I.A. operative General Edward Lansdale. The C.I.A. was ordered to shut down the raids and arms operations, and some effort was made to do so. The F.B.I. raided a house where arms were stored in Louisiana. But, for the most part, the raids and arms shipments continued. Frank Ragano, lawyer for Santo Trafficante, Jr. and Jimmy Hoffa, has argued that Trafficante and the Mafiosos took C.I.A. money but never did anything to kill Castro. Traffacante told his lawyer that on two occasions. The mobsters did not know how it could be done safely.

The theory is that the people involved in these efforts—including some C.I.A. people-- became a rogue force, now determined to get Kennedy. Kennedy's orders to shut down paramilitary training camps in Florida and Louisiana were ignored. Antonio Veciana, a leading Cuban exile, later testified that his C.I.A. control officer told him to go ahead and attack Soviet shipping. That officer was “Maurice Bishop,” or David Atlee Phillips, then attached to the Mexico City station. David Ferrie of Baton Rouge continued to train 5 man commando teams. In the bayous off Lake Pontchartrain, near Lacombe, La, where the F.B.I. had previously raided an arms depot, there was a anti-Castro guerilla camp.

The camp was near a hunting lodge owned by Marcello, on land owned by Mike Laney, a Meyer Lansky ,.who hd lost a $7,000,000 cassino to -Castro. When he was being invited by Miami Police, Mc Laney, according to Life, named among his close friends, J. Edgar Hoover. When Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans , he had an apartment in a building owned by Mike's brother , William Julius Mc Laney. While there he Associated almost exclusively with mob and intelligence people. One of the first people he contacted was F.B.I. informer Arnesto Rodriguez, whom he asked about getting in touch with the people at the camp. The number two man in the New Orleans C.I.A. field office was Hunter Leake, who told his son Robert that he knew Oswald well in those days.
There existed an 8 mm film of it that showed Oswald, Banister, and Phillips. It also showed many men in fatigues going through exercises. The film was in the Georgetown University archives and disappeared when the House Select Committee on Assassinations used them in the mid-1970s.

Both agents E. Howard Hunt and David Atlee Phillips used the code name “Bishop,” and there have been numerous accounts of someone named Bishop being seen with members of Alpha 66, a Cuban extremist group. These Cubans and the agents connected to the Bay of Pigs detested John F. Kennedy because he did not fully back the attempt and did not follow up with a full scale invasion. The House Select Committee on Assassinations knew that the leader of Alpha 66, an extremist Cuban-American group, said he saw Bishop with Lee Oswald in Dallas before the assassination. They also believed that JFK had decided to shut down the efforts to assassinate Castro. Perhaps some in the C.I.A. knew that Kennedy ordered McNamara to prepare a plan for withdrawl from Vietnam by late 1965. Documents proving this surfaced in 1997. And of course there was a pile of evidence that Oswald was tied to the intelligence community. The committee never got beyond that, and it had in place institutional arrangements that prevented it from going farther—not that it wanted to. The C.I.A. denied having an agent by that name or having a record of anyone using that alias. Later, a former investigator for the committee built a good case that David Atlee Phillips used that name, and that his close friend E. Howard Hunt also used it. It would appear that the connection between the CIS and Cuban exiles was probably central to the death of John F. Kennedy.

Former House investigator Fonzi also believed the testimony of Silvia Odio, an anti-Castro activist, who told of Oswald visiting her Dallas apartment in September in the company of two other activists. He spoke of why Kennedy should have been shot after the Bay of Pigs. Her sister also testified that one of the men was Oswald. The other two said they were from New Orleans. The Congressional committee concluded that Oswald could not have been in Dallas then, but Odio’s testimony was to become important in 2008. The other testimony linking the Cuban exiles to the death of Kennedy comes from those Associated with John Martino, once a C.I.A. Black ops guy and an of Samuel Traficante.

Martino had been an electronics expert working on Traficante’s gambling machines in Cuba and then became a Castro prisoner before returning to Miami. Martino became connected to former Ambassador William Pawley and worked for Johnny Roselli. He gave speeches for the John Birch Society. He was closely linked to activist William Pawley, who worked closely with Ted Shackley of the C.I.A.. Martino was close to Frank Sturgis and the anti-Castro activists. The morning of the assassination, he told Flo, his wife, that Kennedy would be killed that day in Dallas. He then started to do some painting in his garage and instructed son Edward to inform him if anything important occurred on TV. After Kennedy was shot, he explained to his wife and son that Oswald was a patsy and that he had passed out materials for the Fair Play for Cuba committee. However, he spent the rest of his life telling the public that Castro was responsible for Kennedy’s death. H.L. Hunt and other Texas oilmen financed many of his seaking engagements. Before his death in 1975 , he told Miami Newsday reporter John Cummings that he had been involved in the plot. Cummings thinks that two Cubans were the shooters. Cummings wrote, “"He told me he'd been part of the assassination of Kennedy. He wasn't in Dallas pulling a trigger, but he was involved. He implied that his role was delivering money, facilitating things.... He asked me not to write it while he was alive." Martino also told his partner that he and the anti-Castro Cubans were behind Kennedy’s death.


It is theorized that three other men dressed as bums picked up shells in the plaza. Some think the three bums were E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and David Lemar Christ (Daniel L. Carswell). All three were with the C.I.A. and Sturgis and Christ had been in Castro ‘s prisons. On the other hand, Fletcher Prouty thought that one of the men looked like Major General Edward Lansdale. However, a C.I.A. man of that rank would not have been on wet operation. Christ was an audio man who also had expertise in modified weaponry. Hunt’s son, S. John Hunt has written that his father told him on his death bed that he was in Dallas that day.

In August, 1978, Victor Marchetti, a former C.I.A. agent, wrote in the Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight that Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Gerald “Jerry” Patrick Hemming were involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. Hemming was a soldier of fortune and gun-runner with ties to Santo Trafficante. In 1978 testimony that was sealed until 1993, Hemming said that he distrusted Sturgis and thought he was tied to military intelligence. He also described a 1962 meeting in the home of Louis Rabel, where the assassination of Castro was present and De Mohrdenschildt was present with piles of hundred dollar bills. Hemming said he was home in Miami when Kennedy was killed and he insisted that the Lorenz story was false It was his impression that Sturgis was in Dallas as were some other Miami people. He had met Oswald twice and was surprised by how much Oswald knew about him. At one point, Oswald was trying to infiltrate a team that was to kill Castro. He allegedly met Ruby in 1959.

Marchetti said that Marita Lorens provided information on this. Later two other writers repeated the story. His claims about the three men was based on a C.I.A. memo which the House Special Committee on Assassinations chose not to publish. Her comments were later expandede in litigation initiated by G. Gordon Liddy and are referenced later in this manuscriot. In the ensuing litigation over the article, Mark Lane represented the Liberty Lobby at one time. In 1995, he convinced a jury that the C.I.A. been involved in the assassination. It developed that Marchetti had consulted Alan Weberman, James Angleton, William Corson, Richard Helms, Stansfield Turner, G. Gordon Liddy, Martina Lorenz, and David Atlee Phillips.

Marita Lorenz, told Gaeton Fonzi: “A month or so prior to November 22nd, 1963, I joined Frank Fiorini ( aka. Frank Sturges), Ozzie (Lee Harvey Oswald), others, Cubans in our group and drove in two cars to the home of Orlando Bosch . This… “highly secret meeting” in Bosch’s home was to discuss certain streets in Dallas, Texas… There was talk of a “highly powerful rifle” and discussions of “feet,” “building,” “timings,” “contacts,”‘silence,” etc.” She added that just before the assassination she drove to Dallas with { Orlando} Bosch, Strugis, Pedro Diaz Lanz , another exile leader, and “two Cuban brothers whose names she does not know”. Fonzi argues that in this interview “Marita Lorenz had impressed me as a fairly credible witness.” Her account also appeared in the New York Daily News, November 3, 1977. An extension of her story appeared in sworn testimony in E.Howard Hunt v. Liberty Lobby (1985). She said that Sturgis was paid by “Eduardo”, Hunt, to transport weapons into Dallas. On the second grip, she met Hunt in a motel, and after he left, Jack Ruby visited for a little less than an hour. She did not know what operation was to be planned but knew she was to be a decoy. Alarmed, she flew back to Miama the night before the assassination. Frank Sturgis later told NYPD Detective Jim Rothstein that he was one of the men who shot John F. Kennedy.

Frank Sturgis answered her story by stating he had never met Oswald. Fonzi eventually claimed that the Lorenz story was disinformation intended to send the committee in a direction away from Hunt and the real action. There was no doubt that she had been Castro’s mistress or that she joined the agency in 1959 and later carried out two dangerous missions in Cuba. Her earliest accounts contain elements that suggest a a C.I.A. effort to mislead, but the usual formula for its disinformation is to include a great deal of true information with lies intended to misdirect.

E. Howard Hunt always insisted he was in Washington, D.C. the day Kennedy died. However, the picture of three bums picked up in Dallas that day has fueled speculation that one of them was Hunt. Moreover, James Jesus Angleton told a reporter and the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.

Another looked like Frank Sturgis, who was never directly employed by the C.I.A.. The picture allegedly showing Sturgis is convincing. Sturgis, who was murdered in 1992, told investigator Henegan that the three hoboes were Sturgis, Hunt, and Charles Harrelson ( father of Woody). Sturgis said that his job that day was to act as a spotter for’sewer assassins,” and added that there was more than one hit team there. Investigator Jim Fetzer also identified Harrelson, but substituted Charles Rogers ( aka Charles Montoya) for Sturgis. Chauncey Holt later confessed to being the tramp who also looked like Hunt. Hunt, on his death bed, told his son he was in Dallas that day.

Harrelson, the tallest of them, was an organized crime figure later sent to prison for killing a San Antonio Judge John Wood with a high powered rifle. Percy Foreman, who represented James Earl Ray, also represented Harrelson. When arrested, Harrelson had the business card of Jack Ruby Russell D. Matthews, who was tied to the Chicago mob and a man who dined with Roby on November 21, 1963.

Anthropologist Gary Mack studied the photographic evidence and said Harrelson was likely the tall tramp. Harrelson once confessed to being involved in the assassination of Kennedy but later retracted his comments, saying they were made under the influence of cocaine., Carlos Marcello’s brother was convicted of hiring Harrelson to shoot Wood. He died March 15, 2007, and the press made no mention of his possible connection with the assassination of JFK. Jo Ann, his widow, thought he looked very much like the tall man in the famous tramp photograph.

Hunt testified to the House that he had never met Frank Sturgis until late 1972—something that seems very unlikely. Sturgis had been very active in the Miami anti-Castro movement and had heard of a C.I.A. named “Eduardo” but he had not met Hunt or “Eduardo” until late Hunt had bragged that he often used disguises, and it is possible that he used some slight disguise then. Likewise David Atlee Phillips, an actor by avocation, admitted to using disguises.

Some thought the third person was Edward Lansdale. This asso C.I.A.tion was probably made because probably design of the assassination looked like Lansdale’s work. General Lansdale was committed to the US effort in Vietnam and had great influence within the C.I.A. because he helped control the gold the Japanese had hidden in the Philippines during World War II . Experts like Mike Sparks and Fletcher Prouty saw the design as classic Lansdale. The great skill in removing conspirators from Dallas and the subsequent cover-up reflect the work of a man of his expertise. The general had many reasons to despise Kennedy, including what he thought were promises of high office in Vietnam.

However, investigator Jim Fetzer makes a good case that the third hit man was Chauncey Holt, a contract C.I.A. killer and a very interesting man. At one time he was Meyer Lansky’s accountant. He was also a counterfeiter and once ran a school for assassins.

The alleged photograph of Hunt shows a resemblance but is a bit fuzzy. St. John Hunt, Howard’s oldest son, also saw the picture: "Around 1975, I was in a phone booth in Maryland somewhere, when I saw a poster on a telephone pole about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw that picture and I fucking -- like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped, my eyes popped out of my head, and smoke came out of my ears. It looks like my dad. There's nobody that has all those same fa C.I.A.l features. People say it's not him. He's said it's not him. But I'm his son, and I've got a gut feeling." He added that he did not remember his father being in D.C. that day. E .Howard Hunt said under oath he was home chopping vegetables with his wife. 1972 In the 1975 trial, attorney Marc Lane pointed out that Hunt had to carefully remind his children that he was home on November 22, 1963. The jury did not believe Hunt. It should be noted that the Warren Commission saw none of the photos of the tramps.

Lois Gibson, a visual identification expert with the Houston Police Department, has made a good case that the three tramps were three entirely different men, whose identities were known. One of them, coincidentally, was also photographed near Oswald when he was passing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets. This is not a matter that is easily resolved. If Hunt and other C.I.A. operatives were in Dealey Plaza, it is very possible that they were not there as tramps. On the other hand, technical experts from 3M's Comtal Corporation in 1988 concluded there was a strong resemblance between Hunt and the third tramp. Earlier, others had reached a similar conclusion by using photo overlays.

Later one of the alleged Dallas “tramps,” Chauncey Holt, said that he was supposed to contact Echevarria after Kennedy was dead. Holt finally decided to talk because he thought the American people needed to know more about the Kennedy assassination. He claimed that he was taking orders from both Meyer Lansky and his C.I.A. controller Philip Twombly, then located in California. At one point Twomby sent him to New Orleans to meet Oswald. Holt knew there was to be a killing but he had no dead John F. Kennedy was tha target. Twombly told Holt to deliver Secret Service credentials to Homer Echevarria, who one would assume gave them to others. This would explain the reports of people encountering agents on the grassy knoll. Holt admitted to producing ID cards in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, Leon Oswald, AND Lee Henry Oswald. Holt also brought extra Secret Service credentials. He used Lansky’s Los Angeles Stamp and Stationary Company to produce the credentials and Ids. He also gave guns with silencers and documents to Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers, and hid with them in a railroad car after the assassination.

Holt rode from Peter Licavoli’s Arizona ranch to Dallas with two hitmen, Charles Nicoletti,James Canty and Leo Moceri. After the assassination, some of the participants hid at an Acapulco safehouse operated by Joseph Ball, A Warren Commission counsel and C.I.A. asset. Harrelson, father of the actor, once said he killed Kennedy and then retracted the statement. He is serving a life sentence for assassinating a federal judge. There is no doubt that Holt was an assassin, a forger, and an employee of both the mopb and the C.I.A.. However, his claims to have been one of the tramps have been rejected by most experts on the assassination. That is, in part, because investigators in 1989 were eventually able to look at the Dallas police records on the three tramps and think they succeeded in checking out all three, who seem to have been ordinary, down-on-their-luck tramps.

If the incident reports are correct, the whole debate on the tramps may be pointless. This is assuming the records can be trusted. One of the hoboes said that Lee Harvey Oswald spoke with them. The fact was he was completely segregated all the time after arrest. There were six to eight men detained. None were fingerprinted or photographed, but Harold Doyle, one of the tramps said he remembered being printed. In 1975, Newsweek published the famous photograph of the three. Speaking of Doyle, it should be noted that none of the later pictures of the man resemble any of the derelects.

Fletcher Prouty has found a photograph of James Hicks, carrying a walkie talkie with a cord dangling down—an antennae. Prouty claims Hicks was a communications man for the people plotting Kennedy’s death. Richard Sprague writes that Hicks coordinated the shooting, actually giving the commands.

A day after Kennedy’s death, Mary Pinchot Myer ( 1920-1964), a painter andthe president’s main mistress, called a friend in New York and said JFK was killed because he was changing too fast and could no longer be controlled. She also called Timothy Leary to say JFK was killed by a high level government conspiracy. By this she meant he was souring on involvement in Vietnam and becoming more distrustful of the C.I.A.. Mary previously told the LSD guru that she had turned on some ranking Washingtonians to drugs. We do not know if she turned Kennedy on to only marijuana or acid as well. A year later she was murdered on October 12, 1964, which incidentally was the birthday of occultist/Satanist Aleister Crowley. Former agent Bob Crow Crowley said she threatened to tell what she knew. She cried out when shot three times by what appeared to be a disturbed young man. Had it been a professional hit, it would have been quite different. She allegedly wrote that she and JFK took LSD before having sex. She was a early peace activist, friend of Timothy Leary ,and her father had helped fund The Masses.

After her death, James Arrington a ranking C.I.A. official and family friend was found in her house looking for her diary. Crowley said Angleton removed “ every bit of the drugs use, all kinds of bad things JFK told her as pillow talk and her inside knowledge of the hit. Not good. “ Later, Arrington purged 150 pages from the autobiography of the late Winston Scott, C.I.A. station chief in Mexico City. Also seized were tape recordings the agency had falsely claimed were of the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald. Crowley maintained that Oswald never went to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City and that station chief E. Howard Hunt dummied up the evidence .

In 2001, Cord Meyer , a C.I.A., man and her former husband, told interviewers that she was killed by” the same sons of bitches …that killed John F. Kennedy." Of course, Hunt, in his last days, tried to implicate Myers. Agent Meyers was known for his leftist leanings and had been appalled when the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. He was the kind of man Hunt would love to have framed. Cord Meyer played a major role in setting up and running Operation Mockingbird, a scheme to control what the press reported. Why would the C.I.A. be interested in Kennedy’s death? He was blamed for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and it was feared that he would splinter the agency. Yet little seemed to have happened after the Bay of Pigs other than Kennedy keeping the agency under somewhat tighter reigns. Some suggest that the C.I.A. disagreed with Kennedy’s intention of extricating the U.S. from the civil war in Vietnam.

In American Spy, Hunt’s memoir, Hunt speculated that LBJ was behind the murder of JFK. Hunt speculated that William K. Harvey of the C.I.A. could have been involved in the assassination. He reasoned that Harvey was a very ambitious man who could use this involvement to his advantage. The memoir was not published while he was alive, and his speculations were superceded by what the dying spy told his son.

In 2007, Howard St. John Hunt told Rolling Stone that his father confessed indirect complicity in the death of John F. Kennedy. E. Howard Hunt also said Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the scheme. . However, we know that Hunt had no use for LBJ. St. John Hunt said his father wrote down that there was a French gunman on the Grassy Knoll. Most experts think this was a reference to Lucien Sarti, a famous assassin from the Corsican mafia.

In 2003, the History Channel aired an interview with Christian David, a French prisoner, who named Sarti as one of three French criminals hired to kill Kennedy. Sarti wore a uniform of some sort on November 22. He was afraid to name the other two. David said the contract to kill Kennedy was originated in Marsailles, and was circulated by Antoine Guerini, head of the Corsi C.I.A.n mob in that city. Guerini was close to Amereican gangster Santo Trafficante, Jr. David declined the contract and three others were hired. They were flown to Mexico City and eventually driven to Dallas and were taken to Montreal after the assassination. David offered an unusual explanation of the assassination, saying there were "three guns, four shots, three hits, one miss." The President was hit twice-- in the back and in the back/neck . Governor Connally was hit by a single bullet that caused five different wounds. Two shots were fired almost simultaneously, explaining why many heard three shots. Two of the assassins were in buildings behind the presidential limousine.

However, the Frenchman may have been the late Jean Pierre Andre rather than Sarti, who can be tied to the Miami scene. C.I.A. records say French assassin Jean Soutre, a member of a violently anti-Kennedy organization, was in Dallas that day. Two days after the assassination, he was picked up and deported.

The elder Hunt, while talking to Howard St. John Hunt, connected Meyer’s name to Morales with a pen. It was known that Morales had bragged, “ We took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?” Morales’s attorney has told more than one reporter that Morales bragged about having some sort of connection to the deaths of both Kennedys. A week later E. Howard Hunt gave his son another piece of paper that said: “Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee] Phillips who brings in Wm. Harvey [ a C.I.A. man tied to Santo Trafficante and Sam Giancante] and Antonio Vecina.[ a member of the exile community] He meets with Oswald in Mexico City. . . . Then Vecina meets w/ Frank Sturgis in Miami and enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons." It went on to state that Hunt’s role was limited to attending a Miami meeting with Sturgis and Morales at which the murder of JFK was discussed. Hunt said he would not get involved in anything with Bill Harvey, “an alcoholic psycho, ” who headed the “Executive Action” or assassinations team.

Later, Hunt wrote an insulting letter to his son, and demanded a return of the JFK memo. St. John returned the original but kept a copy.. There is the possibility that Hunt could have been leading St. John on. He had long treated the club footed son with open contempt. Could it be true that even in death Hunt was covering his own tracks, shielding the people to whom he felt a lasting loyalty, and performing one last service to the C.I.A.?

Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ’s mistress , told about Johnson emerging from a conference of Mafios , F.B.I.officials, and Dallas industrialists, and saying, "those SOB's" would never embarrass him again However her comments are not inconsistent with another scenario. It has been well established that J. Edgar Hoover was close to LBJ and that the Director knew about the plot, did not warn the Secret Service, and obliquely let the mob know that Kennedy’s passing would be good for the country. It could be that LBJ just learned about the plot when he spoke to his mistress over twenty years. As for the presence of the mob at the meeting, it is now known that Hoover had many social contacts with mob people and that the C.I.A. worked hand in glove with the mob on numerous occasions. She insisted the confab occurred on November 21, but there are eviden C.I.A.ry matters that suggest she had the wrong date. There is good photographic evidence that LBJ was in the Houston Coloseum that night. While he probably was not present at that meeting, he had reason to want Kennedy out of the way. Bobby Baker, a former Johnson aid, was one of the first to learn that Kennedy would not have LBJ on the ticket in 1964; and if Baker knew, Johnson knew. He probably also knew tht the Kennedys were planning to use the Bobby Baker corruption case against Johnson.

Gaeton Fonzi, who has written on the subject and once did investigative work for Senator Richard Schweiker, when the Pennsylvanian was part of a two person subcommittee of the Church Committee, entrusted with looking into the murder of JFK. Richard Schweiker, was sure that David Atlee Phillips, the Miami Station chief, and David Morales were deeply involved. Shawn Phillips said his father David Atlee Philllips was in Dallas that day. . Morales was head of operations at the Miami station, which was also the headquarters for The Forty, an assassins squad formed in 1959. Edwin Wilson, Barry Seal, William Seymour, Frank Sturgis and Gerry Hemming were early members. It was later expanded to 70 agents. Morales allegedly confessed to a friend in 1973, ““Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?” He died before he could testify. Had he lived he would have said nothing as he feared being killed by the agency.

Fonzi went on to be an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1976-1978. In fact he was one of only two investigators who regularly in the field. The Committee was poorly funded and its very existence was precarious because few in Washington really wanted to look carefully into the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It went through three chief counsels, the last of whom told the press that the report established that the mob was behind the death of Kennedy.

In fact the report did not establish this; although, mobster Jack Ruby did enter the story, probably as a hired C.I.A. cut out, by eliminating Lee Harvey Oswald. He may have had other duties. At the time, his lady friend was a stripper named Jada Conconforto, who was scheduled to appear in his night club. Jack proudly distributed pictures of her. On the morning of the assassination she hit a pedestrian at 10:30 AM in her haste to leave the city. She said she had to leave Dallas and get to New Orleans. She was killed in a motorcycle accident when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was active. Her sister claimed Jada was murdered because she knew too much.

Journalist Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told Dorothy Kilgallen that eight days before the assassination there was a meeting of Jack Ruby, Officer Jefferson Davis Tippit, and Bernard Weissman at the Carousel Club. Waldo was too frightened to print the story. Kilgallen learned there was a fourth persom present who was big in the oil industry. Kilgallen had interviewed Jack Ruby for eight minutes but never wrote about it, probably saving it for a book she was writing when she died in 1965. According to Earlene Roberts , Oswald’s landlady, a police car pulled up in front of the house, honked twice, and left. Oswald was inside, so it could have been some sort of signal.

If the mob played a larger role, it was probably because it had a long established relationship with the C.I.A.. When Ruby was grabbed after shooting Oswald, he said that now everyone will know everything, “Cuba, guns, New Orleans, everything.” The reference to New Orleans was to continued gun running and attacks against Cuba after John F. Kennedy attempted to stop it. A rebel force was also being trained in Louisiana against Kennedy's orders. Ruby was a police informant, and a policeman friend attempted to visit him but said was told that this was impossible as Ruby was in C.I.A. custody.”

Journalist Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told Dorothy Kilgallen that eight days before the assassination there was a meeting of Jack Ruby, Officer Jefferson Davis Tippit, and Bernard Weissman at the Carousel Club. Waldo was too frightened to print the story. Kilgallen learned there was a fourth persom present who was big in the oil industry. Kilgallen had interviewed Jack Ruby for eight minutes but never wrote about it, probably saving it for a book she was writing when she died in 1965. According to Earlene Roberts , Oswald’s landlady, a police car pulled up in front of the house, honked twice, and left. Oswald was inside, so it could have been some sort of signal.

Journalist Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told Dorothy Kilgallen that eight days before the assassination there was a meeting of Jack Ruby, Officer Jefferson Davis Tippit, and Bernard Weissman at the Carousel Club. Waldo was too frightened to print the story. Kilgallen learned there was a fourth persom present who was big in the oil industry. Kilgallen had interviewed Jack Ruby for eight minutes but never wrote about it, probably saving it for a book she was writing when she died in 1965. According to Earlene Roberts , Oswald’s landlady, a police car pulled up in front of the house, honked twice, and left. Oswald was inside, so it could have been some sort of signal.