Marcello cited the Fifth Amendment and Eighth Amendment and Section 243(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which stated that the country of deportation would have to be one from where “such alien last entered the United States” or was “the country in which he was born.”13
As Bobby was attempting to issue a second deportation order, Marcello was looking to question the legality of the first, which gave him time to plot strategy outside the halls of justice.
In late 1962, pieces of Marcello’s contribution to the Kennedy assassination plot began trickling out through FBI informant Edward Becker. In September 1962, during a New Orleans business meeting at a Marcello-owned swamp property called Churchill Farms, Baker heard an inebriated Marcello begin to let bits of the conspiracy slip out upon mention of Bobby Kennedy’s name.
“Livarsi na petra di la scarpa!” Marcello screamed in Italian, which translated to “Take the stone out of my shoe!”14
“Don’t worry about the little son of a bitch,” Marcello yelled. “He’s going to be taken care of.”
“But you can’t go after Bobby Kennedy,” Becker said. “If you do, you’re going to get into a hell of a lot of trouble.”15
“No, I’m not talkin’ about dat,” Marcello said, intimating more details. “Ya know what they say in Sicily: If you want to kill a dog, you don’t cut off the tail, you cut off the head. The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail, but if the dog’s head is cut off, the dog will die, tail and all.”16
Marcello then told his plans to get a lone nut to take the fall, “the way they do in Sicily.”17
Hoover no doubt learned about the meeting, and surveillance on Becker would increase though the fall of 1962.18 Hoover, after learning about the Marcello meeting through Becker, made a strong effort to discredit the informant.
In late October 1962, a bureau report declared that Becker “allegedly made up ‘stories’ and invented rumors to derive ‘possible gain’ from such false information.”19
Years later, Becker would reflect on what he learned from Marcello. “Remember Carlos had said in front of me at Churchill Hills that he was already thinking of hiring a nut to do the job, the way they do in Sicily? Well, that’s the way the Mafia works in Sicily. Sometimes they entice some half-retarded illiterate kid into making a hit for them. Then they knock the kid off before he can talk.”20
The “half-retarded illiterate kid” would, like Marcello, Giancana, Rosselli, and Trafficante, have connections to both the Mafia and the CIA. Lee Harvey Oswald’s uncle, Charles “Dutz” Murret, whom the HSCA found to be “a surrogate father of sorts” to Oswald, had been an underworld gambling figure and an associate to the Marcello crime family.21
It was also discovered that Oswald was connected to David Ferrie, who worked as a pilot for Marcello up until the Kennedy assassination. Oswald had been in a unit of the Civil Air Patrol in which Ferrie was an instructor.
The Civil Air Patrol counted oilman D. H. Byrd as one of its founders. Byrd, along with owning the building that housed the Texas School Book Depository from where the shots that killed JFK were allegedly fired, was a close friend of and shared business interests with Lyndon Johnson.22
Ferrie was also a link between the CIA and the Mafia. He was reportedly involved in a CIA training camp for Cuban exiles outside of New Orleans in the summer of 1963.23
On the day of the president’s death, Ferrie was in a New Orleans courthouse with Marcello waiting on a verdict concerning Carlos’s deportation.
Following the assassination of John Kennedy, many roads left unexplored by the Warren Commission would lead a clear path to Marcello. He is the one character in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy with connections to all the major players. Oswald, Ruby, Texas oil, the CIA and, most importantly Lyndon Johnson all had direct ties to Marcello.
In 1979, Marcello admitted to FBI informant Joseph Hauser that he had also played a role in the CIA operations to assassinate Castro.
The HSCA would report in its findings that, even though the national crime syndicate as a whole was not involved in the assassination, a splinter group consisting of a “crime leader or a small combination of leaders” could have devised the plot.24
The committee also detailed “credible associations relating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to figures having a relationship, albeit tenuous, with Marcello’s crime family or organization.”25
When Marcello was brought before the HSCA, he denied any knowledge of or involvement in the Kennedy assassination. He also denied ever making any threats against President Kennedy.26
By the mid-1970s, with the government getting ever more curious concerning the relation of Marcello to the CIA, it would no doubt begin to touch on Marcello’s connection to the Kennedy assassination. Giancana and Rosselli were set to testify, and from all indications from Jack Anderson’s reportage, Rosselli was not shy about his involvement.
A plaque that hung from the door of Marcello’s office at the Town & Country Motel in New Orleans conveyed his thoughts on the matter:
THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET IF TWO ARE DEAD27
The relationship between the underworld and the government was the key to devising and realizing a crime where the judge and jury, prosecution and defense, accuser and accused would be one and the same. The last thing needed was a man who could control the parameters of the crime, the crime scene, the evidence and the investigation. No man was in a more desperate position to do so by November 1963 than the vice president of the United States.
In 1979, I signed on to run Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president in New York, among other Northeastern states. I was given a card-file that supposedly held Governor and Mrs. Reagan’s “friends in New York” who might be solicited for help. Among them was a card for Roy M. Cohn, Esq. with the law firm of Saxe Bacon and Bolan. I called Cohn’s office to make an appointment.
Cohn had his own dust-up with the Kennedys. He had tangled with Bobby when both were on the committee staff of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. As attorney general, RFK would push New York US Attorney Robert Morgenthau to indict Cohn twice. Cohn, essentially representing himself, had been acquitted both times. I knew he hated the Kennedys.
On the appointed morning, I arrived at Cohn’s law firm brownstone on the Upper East Side. I cooled my heels for about an hour. Finally I was told to go to a second floor dining room where Mr. Cohn would meet me. He was wearing a silk dressing gown. His heavy-lidded eyes were bloodshot, most likely from a late night of revelry. Seated with Cohn was his lawyer, a heavy-set gentleman, who had been meeting with Cohn.
“Meet Tony Salerno” said Roy.
I was face to face with “Fat Tony” Salerno, at that time the boss of the Genovese Crime family. In October 1986, Fortune Magazine would call the seventy-five-year-old Salerno America’s “top gangster in power, wealth, and influence.” Salerno served as consigliore, underboss, and acting boss of the Genovese family.
“Roy says we are going with Reagan, and that’s all right by me,” said Tony. Salerno said he had eschewed presidential politics since 1960 when “Jack Kennedy took our money and our votes and then fucked us.”
I couldn’t resist.
“Who really killed JFK?” I asked Fat Tony.
“It was Carlos and LBJ” the gangster replied. “He got what was coming to him.”
Cohn simply nodded his head to affirm Salerno’s claim and they both laughed.
Salerno’s comments are intriguing in light of the fact that Clint Murchison, Sr., an inner circle LBJ oilman from Dallas, had a close business relationship with the Genovese family. Vito Genovese and his family owned 20 percent of the Murchison Oil Lease Company, as a Senate Committee discovered in 1955. Clint Murchison also had close business ties with Carlos Marcello, a mafioso with a fantastic hatred of the Kennedys.
In 1963, Clint Murchison was the preeminent business and behind-the-scenes political leader in Dallas. His son Clint Murchison, Jr. was a founding owner of the Dallas Cowboys in 1960. C
lint Murchison, Sr. also had friendships at the highest level nationally. In the summer of 1963, he hosted John J. McCloy, the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1953 to 1970 and longtime high-level foreign policy establishment player, on his Mexican ranch, where they hunted whitewing doves together. McCloy biographer Kai Bird: “That summer, McCloy relaxed more than he had for many years. He hunted whitewings with Clint Murchison on the Texas oil man’s Mexico farm.”
After Allen Dulles and Gerald Ford, John McCloy was one of the key architects of the coverup perpetrated by the Warren Commission.
Ernestine Orrick Van Buren, a longtime secretary of Murchison wrote a biography about him entitled Clint. Van Buren relates that Murchison suffered a huge disappointment with the Democratic nomination of John Kennedy for president in 1960 and was in “cold disbelief” when Lyndon Johnson joined the ticket as VP to JFK.
Van Buren:
In December 1963, soon after Lyndon Johnson became president following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there was a soft rap on the bedroom door where Clint was napping. It was Warren Tilley, butler at Gladoak Farms. ‘Washington calling, Mr. Murchison. The President [LBJ] wants to speak with you.’
A brief silence followed. Then through the closed door came the muffled voice of Clint Murchison. ‘Tell the president I can’t hear him.’ Clint resumed his nap.
What kind of person takes a nap instead of answering the call of the president of the United States? Maybe someone who is more important than the president.
NOTES
1. HSCA Testimony of Santos Trafficante.
2. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 76.
3. Deitche, The Silent Don, pg. 120.
4. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 252.
5. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pg. 154.
6. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 74.
7. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 255.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Carlos Marcello v. Robert F. Kennedy; U.S. Supreme Court Transcript, pg. 5.
11. Ibid, pg. 2.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid, pg. 4.
14. North, Act of Treason, pg. 200.
15. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pg. 122.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid, pg. 122.
18. North, Act of Treason, pg. 200.
19. Ibid, pg. 221.
20. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pg. 231.
21. HSCA Final report, pg. 170.
22. Baker, Russ, Family of Secrets, pgs. 97–98.
23. Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice, pg. 171.
24. House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report, pg. 166.
25. Ibid, 169.
26. HSCA Final Report, pg. 172.
27. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 180.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RELATIONSHIPS
By 1963, Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department were closing in on Vice President Johnson. Johnson was wealthy far beyond what life as a civil servant could afford him, paid by unscrupulous dealings with associates. By President Kennedy’s second term, Bobby wanted to ensure that Johnson would not only be out of office but also facing possible imprisonment. John Kennedy, who remained publicly devoted to Johnson, was covertly plotting to replace him. According to plan, Kennedy would not have to drop Johnson. With Bobby’s help, Johnson would be a victim of his own undoing.
Shortly before his trip to Dallas, President Kennedy sat down in the rocking chair in his personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln’s office. He spoke to her about the considerable governmental changes that he planned to implement in his second term and how Johnson was not the right man to help advocate these transitions.
“I am going to Texas because I have made a commitment,” Kennedy told Lincoln. “I can’t patch up those warring factions. This is for them to do, but I will go because I have told them I would. And it is too early to make an announcement about another running mate. That will perhaps wait until the convention.”1
When asked by Lincoln about his choice for a running mate, Kennedy replied, “At this time, I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.”2 And there were several reasons why.
Twin scandals were consuming the careers of two of Johnson’s closest affiliates: Billy Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. And the vice president was linked to their corruption.
Bobby “Little Lyndon” Baker had served as secretary for the majority in the Senate as well as Johnson’s personal secretary. When he entered the Senate in 1948, Johnson sought Baker out. He had worked in the Senate for six years and knew the ins and outs of the upper house and its occupants.
“Mr. Baker, I understand you know where the bodies are buried in the Senate,” Johnson remarked in their initial telephone call. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come to my office and talk with me.”3
The relationship was mutually beneficial. Johnson had the energy and ambition, and Baker had the insider’s edge to propel their alliance through the Senate.
Baker, whom Johnson sometimes referred to as “my son,” was an errand boy. Calls were made on Johnson’s behalf, notes were taken, and hands were shaken. Baker would be brought to receptions with Johnson to taste the majority leader’s drinks, making sure they were weaker than those of the people he was trying to subdue politically.4 In his years in the Senate and the majority of his time as vice president, Johnson was in contact with Baker daily, considering him an invaluable protégé.
Through Johnson, Baker learned the art of politics and the science of moving money.
At the time, a number of influential Texas politicians and businessmen would meet regularly at the Houston Lamar Hotel.5 The confab took the moniker “Suite 8F,” named after Herman Brown’s hotel room, where they convened. His company, Brown and Root, had supported Johnson’s political campaigns and helped to make him a wealthy man in exchange for government contracts and favorable legislation.
The group favored a “healthy business climate, characterized by a minimum of government regulations, a weak labor movement, a tax system favorable to business investment, the use of government subsidies and supports where needed to spur development, and a conservative approach to the expansion of government social services.”6 Ultimately, the proceedings were an unhealthy collusion of greedy business owners and self-serving politicians.
These men were, in the words of Johnson’s longtime mistress Madeleine Brown, “the great, white fathers of Texas. Primarily, it was your oil people, your high rollers.”7 And she should know.
Madeleine Duncan Brown’s twenty-one-year relationship with Johnson, which produced a son, provides a view to a side of Johnson that his wife and daughters never saw. It was a life that Johnson kept hidden, and for a good reason: the fiery redhead was a prostitute.
As a young girl, Brown spent her evenings with the richest and most powerful men in Texas. When asked many years later about the company she kept, she told researcher Casey Quindlan that she was an advertising executive by day and a call girl by night.
Starting in 1948, the Dallas single mother answered the frequent call of Lyndon Johnson, then just a Texas congressman with the mark of destiny. They wouldn’t meet for long—usually a half-hour, according to Brown, and often at Johnson’s Driskill Hotel suite in Austin. There is strong indication that she traveled with Johnson on occasion, too, but most of their meetings were short, sweet, and purely physical.
“I was wild and full of fire. He had a certain amount of roughness about him, and maybe that’s what I liked, you know. He commanded,” Brown told People Magazine in August 1987. “I’ve been told that every woman needs to act like a whore in bed, and I guess that’s what I did.”
Johnson family confidant Jesse Kellam organized the trysts, and Brown was sworn to secrecy. In April 1950, soon after Johnson had ascended to the US Senate, she told him she was pregnant. Angry at first, the senator watched as Brown grew heavy with his child and quietly made arrangements. When Steven
Brown was born, the mother and her sons were set up in a house with a maid and plenty of credit cards. The support continued for many years, but LBJ would never admit paternity.
Brown remembers seeing J. Edgar Hoover while with Lyndon on their second date together in Austin. She asked Lyndon about it, and it was the first time he warned her with a phrase that he would often repeat: “He told me little girls shouldn’t have big eyes and big ears, and they didn’t see, hear, or repeat anything.” She fulfilled his wishes until the late 1980s, when she made herself available for assassination researchers. Soon after, her son Steven sought paternity redress from the Johnson estate. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1990.
Brown’s interviews are laced with blushing admissions that she was a wild child, kinky in bed and ready to go whenever a hat was dropped. She worked Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a time, a Dallas nightclub notorious for hookers. Her stories about the Texas rich and powerful of the JFK era also ring true. Texas oil barons were known to consort with call girls.
Madeleine Duncan Brown had been a high-dollar prostitute, and Lyndon Baines Johnson was her favorite john. And her stories about whom she saw and overheard while servicing Johnson ring true to this day. In fact, it is her intimate memories that fill in many of the gaps in the Kennedy assassination.
Members of Suite 8F included oil barons Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt, as well as David Harold Byrd, the owner of the building that housed the Texas Book Depository, and Johnson attorney Ed Clark—names that would be standard roll call in Johnson’s political business deals. All these men would factor into and stand to benefit from the succession of Kennedy to Johnson. Known as a “shadow government,”8 the men of Suite 8F could bend business, politics, and power to their will.
The Man Who Killed Kennedy Page 18