by Joan Mellen
That President Kennedy was in favor of unseating Castro, that the assassination of Castro was a good idea, was known to those closest to him, as Kennedy cousin Joseph F. Gargan told me. Rumors abounded when I was completing A Farewell to Justice that Robert Kennedy had given a rousing speech to an audience of militant Cubans at Homestead Air Force base in Florida. Lee Oswald, I was told, had been in attendance.
After my book had been published, I decided to inquire further as to whether this anecdote bore truth. Author William Pepper insisted that an independent film producer, a man with eight Emmys to his credit and who was a close Kennedy confidante, knew that Robert Kennedy had addressed the troops at Homestead Air Force base with Oswald in the crowd. I attempted to verify the story.
Frank Mankiewicz knew nothing. George Stevens, Jr., who was head of the American Film Institute, did not know of any such film producer to whom Bobby was close. John Seigenthaler and John Nolan, who had been Justice Department lawyers, had never heard the story. Neither had Peter Edelman at the Georgetown School of Law. Ed Guthman had never heard the story. Nor had former Time writer, Richard Lubic.
DRE militant Isidro Borja did not know, but pointed out that John F. Kennedy had “entrusted the whole Cuban situation to his brother.”
“I know because they approached me!” Borja said referring to RFK’s group.
When I contacted Kennedy’s daughter, Kerry Kennedy, she wanted to know what kind of information I was looking for.
“About Cuba,” I said.
“Sorry, no thoughts at all,” Kerry Kennedy said, following the Kennedy family policy of silence about Cuba, Castro, and the assassination. These were treated as taboo into the next generation. Only in January 2013, in the fiftieth year following the assassination of President Kennedy, were Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rory Kennedy, two of the children of Bobby Kennedy, willing to address the issue of who was behind the murder of their uncle. Speaking of the Warren report, Robert F. Kennedy acknowledged that “in private” his father “was dismissive of it,” and called it “a shoddy piece of craftsmanship.” His father, he claimed, was “fairly convinced” that there had been “involvement by somebody.” Charlie Rose, the interviewer at a panel at which the Kennedys was speaking, asked, “Organized crime? Cubans?”
“Or rogue CIA,” RFK Jr. added. He said that Bobby’s press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, had told his father, “Garrison was on the wrong track,” leaving out that Mankiewicz changed his mind, and acknowledged Garrison’s contribution at the time of his death. No matter that we have not seen the supposed “phone records between Oswald and Jack Ruby” for the months leading up to the assassination that Robert Kennedy, Jr. claims his father’s investigators discovered. That after fifty years members of the Kennedy family would even question the Warren report is a moment that belongs to history, as does the fact that Kennedys spoke to Charlie Rose at an event in Dallas, Texas.
That Lee Oswald was in Florida during the summer of 1963 is a fact. Soldier of fortune Ed Kolby’s name appears in Oswald’s address book, although Kolby told me he had never heard the Homestead Air Force base story. Edward I. Arthur, another anti-Castro militant, told me that his CIA handler had ordered him to stay away from Oswald. He did not know about the Homestead story either.
There was one last avenue to pursue, one suggested by John Seigenthaler. He told me to consult the Kennedy library and ask for the appointment book of Angela Novello, Robert Kennedy’s secretary. It was then that I learned that RFK’s desk diaries for 1963 were missing. The library told me there was no point in inquiring further. “The curators of the Kennedy library have no idea as to its disposition,” the librarian said.
We do have the words of convicted perjurer and former DCI Richard Helms, who reported to Henry Kissinger, “Robert Kennedy managed personally the operation on the assassination of Castro.”
My research did not end there. Apparently in the service of his determination to “Get Castro,” government documents reveal, Robert Kennedy teamed up with a hard-nosed CIA officer named Charles D. Ford, alias Charles Fiscalini. Robert F. Kennedy pursued the murder of Castro using his own operatives under CIA’s Operation Mongoose, headed by the chief of CIA’s Executive Action program, William K. Harvey.
In his oral history for CIA, where, surely, he had no incentive to lie since he was putting on the record information that would have been known to his fellow officers, clandestine services operative Sam Halpern discusses Operation Mongoose. “All directions came from the White House,” Halpern says, “basically Bobby Kennedy, through the voice of a fellow called General Edward Lansdale.” In the minutes of the August 10, 1962, meeting of the President’s Special Group (Augmented), Lansdale had spoken of the “elimination of leaders.” The meaning of that escaped no one.
In January 1963, according to Halpern, Robert Kennedy, now operating without Edward Lansdale, sent an order to “get rid of Castro and the Castro regime.” It was then that Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA officer heading Western Hemisphere operations, came up with the preposterous scheme of an exploding seashell to use against Castro. These plots culminated in Rolando Cubela’s plan to use a ball point pen with Black Leaf 40 poison in it to eliminate Castro. Cubela demanded direct contact with Robert Kennedy, whom he knew was the sponsor of this assassination attempt. He had to settle for Desmond Fitzgerald.
Halpern says that Robert Kennedy was “obsessed” by Fidel Castro and made Castro’s fall his personal cause. Later, CIA’s Office of Security was appalled by Lansdale’s conduct “in the highly secret Cuban operation known as ‘Mongoose,’” making Lansdale “virtually persona non grata.”
Robert and John F. Kennedy’s determination to “do something about getting rid of Castro and the Castro regime,” as Sam Halpern put it, belonged to the same culture of murder. The idea astonished Jim Garrison, to whom it seemed inconceivable that Robert Kennedy should have behaved like the people who murdered his brother, rather than devoting himself to bringing them to justice.
Halpern’s most startling revelation was that Robert Kennedy sent CIA officer Charlie Ford to Canada to recruit Mafia assassins for the purpose of eliminating Castro. Thirty years later, Halpern seems genuinely astonished that RFK would enlist the Mafia during the same period that he was battling them. Halpern relates that “we had to assign an officer to Bobby Kennedy, to be used by Bobby Kennedy to make contact with Mafia types in this country and in Canada.”
Robert Kennedy had told CIA that “the Mafia must have left some kind of stay-behind network in Cuba because all of their interests that they had in Cuba when Fidel came in.” It appears that, like Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner before him, Robert F. Kennedy had discovered an appetite for the covert action game.
Sitting with Bill Harvey, it was Halpern who selected the case officer to be assigned to Robert Kennedy. The request had come “from Bobby to General Marshall Carter, who was then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, to Bill Harvey, from Harvey to me.” General Marshall Carter was the brother of Lyndon Johnson’s factotum, Clifford Crawford Carter, Johnson’s fixer on the ground in Texas.
The name Harvey and Halpern came up with was Charles (Charlie) Ford. Ford was a huge man, who would have been a serviceable lineman on a football team. As investigative journalist Seymour Hersh describes him, Ford was a “husky and dark-skinned man.” Yet he was not without vanity. Charles Ford had handkerchiefs and shirts with the initial CF on them. His alias had to comply.
“How about Charlie (“Rocky”) Fiscalini?” Halpern said.
Robert Kennedy’s secretary, Angela Novello, spelled the name “Fiscollini” in her appointment log, but it has come down as “Fiscalini.” In the service of Kennedy’s plan to assassinate Castro, Fiscalini traveled the United States and went as far as Toronto. Sitting in the “bullpen,” the front office of Task Force W (Operation Mongoose), Fiscalini never spoke. He never told Halpern whom he had seen or what they talked about. For Halpern, it seemed “a waste of time and effort,” and from a tradecraft
perspective it was putting a man in danger for no apparent purpose.
With Halpern, Fiscalini was tight-lipped. He would stick his head into Halpern’s office before he departed for one of his trips. “I’m off again, Sam,” he would say. “Bye!” Halpern knew he went to Toronto only because, that one time, Fiscalini said, “I’m leaving the country.”
Halpern was certain: “Charlie and Bobby must have been working on using the Mafia in some kind of assassination plots.” A CIA internal search of Charles Ford reveals: February 20, 1963: REQUEST FOR CIA IDENTIFICATION CARD IN ALIAS. Ford’s Q clearance was granted on June 8, 1963, and in July he was reassigned and “approved for domestic assignment.” There isn’t much more.
Later, in a frantic effort to reinvent Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy loyalists accused Halpern of lying about the Fiscalini story. The facts are not on their side. Seymour Hersh learned that Angella Novello’s telephone log for 1962 contained a date for a meeting between Robert Kennedy, General Marshall Carter and Charles Ford (Fiscalini). Halpern confided to Hersh that “Bobby Kennedy’s primary purpose in dealing with Charles Ford was to do what Bill Harvey was not doing—find someone to assassinate Fidel Castro.” Fiscalini averaged two trips a month for the attorney general. Ford/Fiscalini testified to the same information before Senator Schweiker and the Church Committee.
Before the Church committee, Charles D. Ford revealed that he operated under the name “Charles D. Fiscalini” on matters relating to Cuba. CIA’s Office of Security told the Church Committee that they had no files relating to Charles Ford “which would indicate he had been used to contact underworld figures for possible use against Fidel Castro.”
Then Robert Gambino, heading the Office of Security, admitted that “in November 1961 Mr. Ford was assigned to the Deputy Director for Operations, Western Hemisphere Division as an operations officer.” As to “the specific nature of his duties on behalf of the Western Hemisphere Division, Task Force W, or the Special Affairs Staff,” the Office of Security, maintaining its independence from the clandestine services, claimed that they had no information.
Ford was more forthcoming at his second appearance before the Church committee. In 1961, he said, he had been assigned to WH/4 and had handled Cuban agents. He refused to reveal who had assigned to him his “code name” (it was Halpern). To the Church investigators, Ford did admit that he had meetings with the Attorney General “and his interest in a small group of Cubans who claimed to have supporters in Cuba ready to create an uprising in Santiago Province.”
Although Fiscalini steadfastly protected Robert Kennedy and his separate efforts to murder Fidel Castro, a few documents have surfaced that suggest what he was up to on behalf of the Attorney General. One has RFK urging Fiscalini to see a Cuban named Ernesto Betancourt, whose group “has plans for sabotage activities and a general uprising in Cuba before the end of this month.” Although CIA found Betancourt’s claim dubious, Robert Kennedy insisted that “we should keep in touch with BETANCOURT and do whatever we can to help his group.”
As I revealed in A Farewell to Justice (See Chapter 11), Ramsey Clark told me how astonished he was when he discovered that Robert Kennedy had left behind in his desk a memo to RFK from General Edward Lansdale outlining ways to assassinate Fidel Castro.
It seems apparent that Robert Kennedy’s ambitions under Mongoose to assassinate Fidel Castro led to the Kennedys and their entourage taking what they knew about the assassinations to their graves. Not a word was spoken about the evidence available about the assassination by Kenny O’Donnell; Theodore Sorensen; Arthur Schlesinger; or members of the president’s family. (Arthur Schlesinger did tell my emissary, Wilmer Thomas, who asked him who he thought killed the President, that “we were at war with the national security people.”)
Included in the confidential files of the Robert Kennedy Archive, the Globe writes in the article cited above, were the “top secret” minutes of the Cuba Study Group in 1961, along with the revelation that “the US government was trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, an effort in which Robert Kennedy was deeply enmeshed.”
Another closed file was titled “Operation MONGOOSE,” the program under which Robert Kennedy utilized Charles Fiscalini. After Alberto Fowler brought Bernardo de Torres to work in the Garrison office, “Benny” reported not only to CIA, but separately to RFK’s group.
In participating in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, Robert Kennedy participated in the political culture that led to his brother’s murder. He was sufficiently uneasy about the connection between his pursuing assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and his brother’s murder to obstruct all investigations into his brother’s death. Jim Garrison became yet another obsession of Robert Kennedy’s.
In his naiveté and his admiration for the fallen president, whom he habitually called “Jack Kennedy,” Jim Garrison struggled to understand RFK’s animus toward him. The president’s brother had never been what he seemed.
SOME LATE ARRIVING EVIDENCE
Among documents that arrived after publication was an FBI summary of its history with Jim Garrison’s first chief investigator, Pershing Oliver Gervais. (See Chapter 1.) Pershing’s dates as an FBI informant began March 3, 1955, and last until May 10, 1962, which coincides with his appointment to the office of the district attorney of Orleans Parish. Then Pershing was “reopened as an informant on 5/22/66 and discontinued on 2/24/67.”
Among Gervais’ malfeasances was impersonating an FBI agent. Jack Martin believed that Pershing tapped his telephone. As for the FBI’s surveillance of Jim Garrison, FBI taps on his telephone began on 1/30/63 and lasted through 6/15/64, obviously a fragmentary record.
Former FBI clerk William Walter resurfaced with the news that he had retained the original copy of a fax that came in to the FBI’s New Orleans field office on November 17, 1963, from J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that there might be peril to President Kennedy in Dallas on his forthcoming trip. That the Bureau did not bring home this danger to those assigned to safeguard the President’s life is a given.
Other information that has emerged reinforces the documentation of Jim Garrison’s complaint that evidence disappeared from his office on a regular basis. Al Crouch, from whom David Ferrie rented airplanes, and who owned Saturn Aviation, had fired Ferrie. Crouch received calls from the FBI and CIA and knew enough to put Ferrie’s log books in a floor safe. Indeed, the log books survived a break-in.
After that, Crouch was eager to get rid of the Ferrie logs. He contacted the Garrison office. Two of the three traitorous Gurvich brothers, William and Leonard, soon arrived. When they told Crouch they worked for Jim Garrison, he handed over the log books to them. Crouch believed the Gurviches were taking the log books to Jim Garrison. The books were never seen again. The incident offers one more example of the obstruction of justice that plagued Jim Garrison.
Some time later, Crouch received an anonymous telephone call. ‘You have my log books,” the caller said. “I want you to wrap up my log books.” Then the person added, “Do you have a little girl about three years old who rides a bicycle?”
After that, Crouch kept silent. “I felt like a dead man,” he said years later.
Edward O’Donnell was the police officer who did the most to undermine Jim Garrison’s witness, Perry Russo. O’Donnell had claimed that Russo had admitted to him that he had lied, that he had not seen Clay Shaw at David Ferrie’s home the night of the party when they discussed their alibis, when they outlined where they would be when President Kennedy would be murdered. O’Donnell turns out to have been employed, secretly, like Lee Oswald, by United States Customs.
Judge Denis A. Barry, Jim Garrison’s former law partner, and no Garrison friend, telephoned me, surprisingly. He thought I should know that a “major personality” from a “major news organization” had telephoned Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard and offered him money to say that the autopsy of Jim Garrison revealed that he had died of AIDS. As I wrote in A Farewell to Justice, Dr. Minyard’s decision
to perform an autopsy, against the wishes of the Garrison family, had been precisely a pre-emptive effort to ward off people making scurrilous charges.
I tried to persuade Barry to reveal the name of that newsman. Was it Dan Rather? No. Was it PBS or Scott Malone? Malone had made the suggestion to me that Garrison had died of AIDS. Barry denied that the caller was either of these and left it at that. Such incidents, the theft of the Ferrie log books, personal attacks on Jim Garrison, reiterate how close Jim Garrison was to the truth about the Kennedy assassination, and how important it was to those responsible—and those who succeeded them—to continue to discredit him down the years.
There were frivolous additions to the book as well. Garrison’s Tulane School of Law classmate Wilmer Thomas wanted me to know that Jim Garrison would sometimes show up for an 8 A.M. class in tails, with a flask and a cane. He had been to an all-night party, and had no time to go home and change.
Some new information emerged out of East Feliciana Parish where Oswald had traveled with David Ferrie and Clay Shaw, and where Oswald had been much taken with Gloria Wilson. I learned that right after the assassination, a man named Joseph Tate had been chatting with Gladys Palmer, that former Ruby dancer, at the Ragland Bar at the St. Francisville ferry landing. Suddenly the FBI arrived and took Tate and Palmer down to the jail in St. Francisville for questioning.
It was one more instance of how federal law enforcement was well aware of the importance of events in East Feliciana Parish to unraveling the story of the assassination. The FBI treated Tate and Palmer as if they were lovers, but they were not. The FBI’s questions all concerned Jack Ruby.