by Peter Janney
The plot to kill Fidel Castro, code-named Operation Mongoose, began to take shape in November 1961. Shimon’s revelations to Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson included the fact that the covert operation had the blessings of America’s most notorious underworld figures. Santo Trafficante, who had controlled much of Cuba’s underworld before Castro took power in 1959—particularly the lucrative Cuban casinos—had told Shimon explicitly, “I’ll get you the contacts [assassins], give you lots of names. But keep me out of it.” Harvey and Johnny Roselli then recruited the hit men recommended by Trafficante. In all, a total of six teams were sent to Havana, but none succeeded; they never returned nor were they heard from again.12
Joe Shimon realized, as did Bill Harvey and Johnny Roselli, that Castro must have found out he was being targeted. The hired assassins were true professionals—experienced and tested. They would not have all have failed repeatedly unless Castro had been waiting for them. “You don’t have that many misses, with these fellows not coming back,” Shimon told Anderson. Furthermore, during this time, there were only six individuals who were involved in the CIA’s plot to use organized crime to eliminate Castro. According to Shimon, there had been no paper trail of the effort; nothing had been written down.
Shimon’s suspicion pointed toward Trafficante. He suspected that Trafficante had tipped off Castro about the CIA’s plans to assassinate him. Post columnist Jack Anderson noted correctly that although Trafficante had been initially jailed by Castro when he first took power, losing all his assets including the casinos, he somehow, “for some inexplicable reason,” escaped from jail and Cuba unscathed, then returned to the U.S. with all his treasure intact. “Suddenly Trafficante is released…. He comes back here with all his assets, with the yacht…. Others eventually got out, but they left Cuba broke.” Trafficante quickly expanded his hegemony in the crime underworld in the South, almost overnight. Shimon eventually asked his friend Sam Giancana about Trafficante’s reliability, and Giancana confirmed for Shimon that he didn’t regard him as reliable, because “he was a rat.” The CIA had come to the same conclusion, eventually calling off their friends in organized crime, and looked for other ways to dispose of Cuba’s leader.
Playing to Jack Anderson’s well-known appetite for a more conspiratorial spin on the role of Castro and Cuba in the Kennedy assassination, Shimon tried to paint a picture for Anderson in which Castro had conspired with Trafficante to assassinate President Kennedy as payback for the attempts on Castro’s life, telling Anderson that his conclusion was “confirmed by Harvey who had other information from the CIA.” Anderson naively took the bait. Shimon would continue to tell him that “they [the CIA] had other sources, too. They were satisfied that this had to be retaliation by Castro.”13
What Joe Shimon hadn’t told Anderson, he did eventually share with his daughter: Trafficante was furious with Shimon for having questioned his allegiances. So furious, in fact, that in 1964, he took out a contract on Shimon’s life as well on his daughter and on his wife.
“I was so upset when he sat me down to talk about this in 1976,” recalled Toni. “I was visiting Dad in Washington when he told me about this. He was still very afraid to talk about the Kennedy assassination. I vividly remember him telling me, ‘Look, honey, if anything happens to me, watch the movie Executive Action. You’ll understand then why I couldn’t talk.’”
For Toni, additional pieces of the puzzle about her father began to take shape. During her college years, as she considered a career in law enforcement, her father asked her to seriously think of joining the FBI. She told him she would consider it, only later telling her mother about her father’s request. Her mother became furious at her former husband, knowing full well the danger her daughter might fall into. Years later, Shimon confided to Toni, “We wanted you to work for the FBI so you could spy on Hoover for us.”
“Dad, who is ‘we’?” she asked him. She would finally learn that even as late as 1989, after the Reagan administration, her father was maintaining regular contact with a group of people who had inside knowledge at all times.
“He always knew what was going on in the White House,” Toni recalled, “long after he left there. I finally learned that he was a part of what might be called ‘the shadow government.’ My father did a lot for President George H. W. Bush. He was a die-hard Republican, yet so conflicted about Bush, he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, only to regret it later.”
In the early 1990s, Toni had the kind of conversation with her father that she never would have anticipated. It was a bad dream come true. The former “Washington Police Inspector” would finally spill to his daughter what he had never revealed to anyone else, other than the people he was working for. It happened unexpectedly.
“I remember him telling me how much he disliked the Kennedys, that after their assassinations, he knew it was the best thing ever to happen in our country,” said Toni, thinking back. Probed even further, father Joe continued talking, perhaps knowing that the end of his life was approaching.
“Bobby Kennedy was a mean son of bitch,” said Shimon, obviously remembering how the former attorney general had tried to implicate him in a wiretapping scandal. “No one I knew liked him. He was mean and nasty and thought it was him who should be president. We all told him and the president that Texas wasn’t a friendly place.”
“The Kennedys had mob ties,” he continued, “but the biggest crooks in this country are the Bushes. The Bush family is big on control, they control a lot of the government.” The conversation progressed, Toni recalled, with her father stating that his former Washington-based company, Allied Investigators, whose offices were located on Dupont Circle in Washington, was just a CIA front that had been used for most of his undercover work.
She wasn’t prepared for the next round of her father’s fireworks, however. It was the kind of dreaded moment that one hopes is only a nightmare, a bad dream from which to finally awaken unscathed.
“Our government has murdered a lot of people when they get in the way,” he told his daughter.
“How do you know this, Dad?” She wasn’t expecting a definitive response, but just curious as to what she might come to know or understand. After a few moments of silence, Joe Shimon continued.
“Among my many jobs, I used to kill people,” he told his daughter matter-of-factly. “Our government hired me and others to do this sort of work.” It wasn’t a bad dream, or a nightmare. It was real. Truth is an equal opportunity employer that never discriminates. When it arrives, the MasterCard statement from the Bank of Truth doesn’t offer an option of “partial payment.” Instead, it dictates its own terms of “pay me now, or pay me later.” But, invariably, all of us eventually have to reckon. I had confronted this dilemma myself, just as Toni Shimon had. She had wanted to know her father, never imagining what this might actually reveal.
“You did?” Toni exclaimed softly, as the echo of her father’s last words penetrated like nails, one after another, into her heart.
“The government hired me to kill people,” continued Shimon. “It’s a job, and usually the people who get killed deserve it. You have to [kill people], if that’s what you’re told to do.”14
The story had now come full circle. Perhaps Toni hoped, like any number of us during the Cold War, that the truth about what our fathers were actually doing in the world might finally offer some consolation. If it did, it came with a huge price tag. As to her father’s admission, “it really turned me off,” Toni said during our final interview. “I loved my father very much.”
“I wish you could have spent some time with Dad,” she said, as our talk that day was coming to an end. “I think he knew about the whole plan to take out Mary Meyer, probably through Bill Harvey. They were very close.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Just the way he spoke about it,” she replied. “I just knew he knew. Whatever Bill Harvey was up to, it always came out of Jim Angleton’s office. Dad once remarked Angleton ran ever
ything, controlled everything in the CIA.”15
I thanked Toni once again and gathered my materials, making my way to the car. The trip back to Massachusetts, across Long Island Sound on the New London ferry, would be a relief, I kept telling myself. But it wasn’t. Toni had further confirmed all my suspicions, authenticating an even darker shadow.
Istood on the bow of the New London ferry as it made its way across Long Island Sound. It was the middle of February 2007, still bitterly cold and dark. The boat rocked through the oncoming swells, inching toward the Connecticut shoreline. My thoughts inevitably returned to Mary and all that she must have endured during the year after Jack’s death: the anguish, the loneliness, the fear of what she faced that final year, before deciding to finally go public with what she had discovered. If Paul Revere had been the “midnight messenger” to warn his fellow countrymen in Lexington and Concord of the British military approach, Mary Pinchot Meyer had planned to make her own “midnight bareback ride” to warn the citizens of a country that its government had been demonically stolen from each and every one of them.
They had killed Jack because he and his ally-in-peace Nikita Khrushchev were steering the world away from the Cold War toward peace, thereby eliminating the military-industrial-intelligence complex’s most treasured weapons—the fear of war, the fear of “Communist takeover,” and the manipulative use of Fear itself. The Cold War was about to end, and with it the covert action arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Agency would have been all but neutered, its funding and resources cut, its menacing grip on public opinion exposed and eliminated. It also meant the eventual curtailment of many of the defense industries, including the proliferation of nuclear arms. There would have been no war in Southeast Asia or Vietnam; that, too, was about to end. A rapprochement with Fidel Castro and Cuba was on the horizon. Both Jack and Fidel wanted “a lasting peace.”
Little attention had been paid to the parting words of a previous president. President Eisenhower had warned the American public in early 1961 of the evil that had spawned since World War II: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Indeed, it had; so much so that in less than three years, anyone who tried to stop it—including the elected president of the United States—would be eliminated.
Simply put, peace—particularly world peace—wasn’t good for business, nor for American military and economic hegemony. Whatever enlightenment Mary and Jack may have finally engendered together, it had evolved into a part of Jack’s newfound trajectory of where he wanted to take not only his presidency in 1963, but the entire world. It was the pursuit of peace that was about to take center stage; and that voyage would no longer include any obsequious bow to the insanity of America’s war machine driven by the legacy of Allen Dulles and his ass-kissing cronies.
After Dallas, amid utter horror and shock, Mary had taken it upon herself to discover and make sense of the truth of the conspiracy that had taken place—only to realize the magnitude of the second conspiracy, a cover-up taking place right before her eyes. There, in her diary, she had reached an understanding. It was her own mosaic of people, events, circumstances, and exploration that informed her understanding—not only of the evil that had taken place in Dallas, but of the villainous darkness that was now enveloping all of America. She had furiously confronted her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, possibly Jim Angleton as well, with what she had discovered, not fully realizing the extent of their own diabolical ruthlessness. The Warren Report was ultimately nothing more than a house of cards; once ignited with the right matchstick, it would be engulfed in flames. If Mary courageously went public with who she was, and what she knew, making clear her position in the final years of Jack’s life, people with influence would take notice; the fire of suspicion around Dallas would erupt into a conflagration.
She had to be eliminated.
“Forget her, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” The concluding line of Roman Polanski’s film wafted through my mind, tempting me away from the task that now clearly lay ahead. Nausea was overtaking me, but it wasn’t the ferry pitching through the oncoming swells, veteran ocean sailor that I was. It was Mary’s revulsion for the CIA, now mine as well, that gripped me in its vise. Alone on the deck, hands outstretched toward the last bit of light on a short winter’s day, I unleashed my screams toward the sky, only to then collapse at the rail, sobbing one more time. In a certain way, my torment had come to an end, yet behind it there was an unbearable sadness, and not just my own. The shining beacon of America—a promise unlike any other for humanity—was being extinguished, as it had been in Rome. But unlike Rome, America would not be engulfed by flames. It would instead succumb to something far more sinister, invisible, and corrosive: ignorance. Ignorance dipped in fear-mongering and dazzled by fabricated myths had become the breeding ground for official stupidity, darkness, and senseless wars. Ignorance had once again become evil’s greatest handyman. As Benjamin Franklin wisely noted, “It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
Mary Pinchot Meyer had been struck down before she could speak publicly. Leo Damore had fallen, very likely poisoned into uncontrollable despair. John Davis, having picked up Leo’s mantle, finally opted out, his life threatened. He “wanted to live,” he said, shortly before a crippling stroke.
The familiar taste of salt water on my lips called me back inside my body. The wind and ocean spray danced all around, the cold of winter now an accustomed companion. I headed back inside the ferry’s cabin for warmth. Somber, yet still resolute, I knew right then and there I would do whatever it took, pay whatever price was required, to allow this story—this small but essential piece of history—to see the light of day.
APPENDICES
Appendix #1: FBI Crime Lab Report for the Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer
Appendix #2: Confidential U.S. Justice Memorandum, February 24, 1965
Appendix #3: Notes Taken by Attorney James (“Jimmy”) H. Smith on His Telephone Call with Leo Damore, March 31, 1993, at Approximately 8:30 A.M.
Appendix #4: Ben Bradlee’s 1952 Rosenberg Case Press Liaison with the CIA
Appendix 1:
FBI Crime Lab Report for the Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer
Appendix 2:
Confidential U.S. Justice Memorandum, February 24, 1965
Appendix 3:
Notes Taken by Attorney James (“Jimmy”) H. Smith on His Telephone Call with Leo Damore, March 31, 1993, at Approximately 8:30 A.M.
The following pages are copies of the notes attorney James Smith took on the morning of March 31, 1993, when author Leo Damore called him. The six (6) pages of notes document the telephone call and what was said during the course of the conversation. After Smith shared these notes with me in 2004, we spent hours together over a three-year period going over each line, thereby further stimulating Smith’s recall and accuracy. As of 2011, Smith has reviewed this appendix and fully endorses it to be true and accurate.2
Each page of the notes has been transcribed so that the reader can make sense of what took place during their conversation. There is also a discussion of the information that is given on each page for better understanding.
Page 1: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993.
Page 1: Transcription
Introduction
These notes were taken by attorney James H. Smith on a telephone call with his client and dear friend Leo Damore on the morning of March 31, 1993. Damore’s tapes of his phone conversation with “William L. Mitchell” were not found among Damore’s belongings after his death, nor was a transcript of the call ever located. However, Jimmy Smith has aided the author in the reconstruction and interpretation of his notes from Damore’s account of his conversation with Mitchell.
The time of Damore’s call, according to Smith, was between 8:00 and 8:30. Ther
e are two pieces of this mosaic that Damore reveals on page 1: that he finally had telephone contact with “William L. Mitchell” the night before; and that he, Damore, had come into possession of Mary’s diary—a fact that he had not revealed before.
Page 1 Discussion
Excitedly, Damore announces that he believes he has finally solved the murder of Mary Meyer. He tells Smith that “Mitchell” was a former FBI liaison, and that he, Damore, has been up most of the night (“up to 4 am”) talking to him. The two apparently made an appointment to meet in person.
Damore also indicates that he has examined Mary’s diary—in which Mary made a connection with “it”—JFK’s assassination and the CIA’s involvement, where “James Angleton” figures prominently. Also in Mary’s diary, according to Damore, was Mary’s knowledge that Bobby Kennedy (“Robt K was catalyst”) was going to “fire” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover after President Kennedy was reelected in 1964. The inference here is that Hoover may have also wanted Mary Meyer dead for fear of what she knew, perhaps about Hoover himself or about the FBI’s involvement in the assassination and its cover-up, or both.