[CTRL] Fwd: From September 11 to 9/11 [3rd of 3 parts]

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:50:25 -0700

-Caveat Lector-

Begin forwarded message:

Date: September 22, 2006 8:07:59 PM PDT
Subject: From September 11 to 9/11 [3rd of 3 parts]

 
Through the summer and into the autumn of 1962, Carlos [Marcello] was faced with increasing pressure from the feds. There were two indictments looming over him. One involved IRS tax liens of $835,000 against him and his wife; the other involved his forged Guatemalan birth certificate, which could lead to deportation a second time.

On September 11, [1962], it is alleged that he visited his huge, swampland property called Churchill Farms. Located on the West Bank, it covered some 6,400 acres. Among other things, it was used for duck shooting, but was rumoured to also be his private burial ground for those foolish enough to cross him, or worse cheat him on business deals. In one of the ramshackle farm buildings, he had built a conference room butting on to a kitchen and a dining room. Here, he brought three other men for a session of drinking and business discussions. There was Jack Liberto, a man with ties to the French Quarter, and probably a member of the crime family. The second was Carlo Ruppolo, who was one of Carlos’ closest aids and life long friends; they had grown up together in Algiers, and his wife Lillian worked for Marcello in one of his businesses. Then there was the third man, Edward Becker. He was connected to Ruppolo by a business deal, which they had been discussing earlier that day in Carlos’ office at The Town and Country complex.

The men spent the afternoon eating, drinking and talking business, and then at one stage, Becker commented on the treatment Carlos had received from Robert Kennedy. According to Becker, Carlos started stomping around the room, ranting and screaming about what he was going to do to the younger Kennedy brother.

"Livarsi `na pietra di la scarpa!" he shouted. Translated from Sicilian it meant: "Take the stone out of my shoe!" He looked at Becker and said, "Don’t worry about that sonofabitch Bobby, he’s gonna be taken care of!"

"But you can’t go after Bobby," Becker said. "Look at the trouble that will bring down."

"No, not that," yelled Carlos. "In Sicily they say if you want to kill a dog you don’t cut off the tail. You go for the head." The meaning, to Becker, was very clear, but then Carlos elaborated by stating that he planned to have President Kennedy murdered, using someone not in any way connected to him or his organization.

Becker met with Marcello on a number of other occasions, but no mention was made of the Kennedys or the threats that had been made. A couple of weeks later, Santo Trafficante, the mob boss from Tampa and personal friend of Marcello was in Miami Beach at the Scott Byron Motel also discussing business with a Cuban businessman, Jose Aleman Jr. He was trying to raise a loan of $1.5 million to build a condominium building. The money was to come from the funds of the Teamsters Union and Trafficante was acting as a conduit to Jimmy Hoffa, the corrupt Teamsters' president.

At some stage in their conversation, Trafficante belittled Robert Kennedy for his war against Hoffa and made mention of the fact that he and his brother, the President were due some serious trouble. Aleman supported President Kennedy’s actions and thought he would probably be re-elected. Trafficante, his face serious, leaned close to Aleman and said, "You don’t understand me, Jose. Kennedy’s not going to make it to the election. He is going to be hit."

Unknown to Trafficante, Jose Aleman was an informant for the FBI.  He claims he reported this conversation to two agents -- George Davis and Paul Scranton -- but neither they nor the agency took any action.

These are the two most famous anecdotes that tie Marcello into the events that would shake the world fourteen months later. Are they falsehoods or misunderstandings or did they actually occur as they were recounted? Hubie Badeaux, a former New Orleans police intelligence chief discounts the Marcello story. He claimed that Marcello did not talk like that. "He’s not even Sicilian -- he was born in North Africa. You have to know Marcello and the way that he talked to know how stupid that story is." Frank Ragano, a lawyer for Trafficante, stated that he once asked of Marcello, in Sicilian, how many children did he have. Carlos replied: "Man, I don’t speak that shit, only English."

Ragano also recounted that on March 13, 1987, he visited the ailing Trafficante, and they went for a drive in Ragano’s car on Bayshore Boulevard, in Tampa. As they were driving along, Trafficante suddenly blurted out, in Sicilian, "We shouldn’t have killed Giovanni (John). We should have killed Bobby."

On November 20th, 1962, the FBI in Los Angeles interviewed Becker in connection with another matter. He detailed his meeting with Marcello, but the agents conducting the interview were not interested. It seemed as if the FBI were just not going to take any steps to investigate Marcello. There was even a strong possibility that the FBI office in New Orleans was deliberately going out of its way to avoid trying to penetrate Marcello’s criminal organization.

In 1979, before a Senate investigative committee, a former FBI agent stated that the two cities that the FBI failed to penetrate in terms of the Mafia were Dallas and New Orleans, both controlled by Marcello. It is even possible that the FBI agent assigned to Marcello, Regis Kennedy, was not only not diligently doing his job on the target assigned to him, but was in fact in the pocket of Carlos. Whatever is the truth, the fact is that events were unfolding that would lead inexorably to a motorcar on a street on November 22, 1963.

...
 
Four days after King was killed, John McFerren, a black man, reported to the FBI in Memphis, that he had overheard a telephone conversation prior to the day of the murder, in which the speaker had said: "….kill the SOB on the balcony. You will get your $5000… don’t come here, go to New Orleans and get your money." The man on the telephone was identified as one of the owners of Liberto, Liberto and Latch Produce Store. He was Frank Liberto, brother of Salvatore "Jack" Liberto, the man who attended the Churchill Farms conference on September 11, 1962 with Carlos, Becker and Ruppolo.
 
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations confirmed the mob ties of the men and their links to Marcello
 
Salvatore Liberto was heavily involved in the New Orleans Mafia-dominated produce markets and Sam DiPiazza was a king hitter in the gambling outlets of Marcello’s empire. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Marcello funded Ray as he stalked Dr. King through the South in the months leading up to April 4.

In May, 1968, as Robert Kennedy was getting into first gear in his run as Democratic candidate for the presidency, Jimmy Hoffa ex-teamster boss was in prison in the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg. He was overheard discussing a plot to kill Robert Kennedy with Carmine Galante, the feared underboss of the Bonanno crime family of New York. There were rumours of a $750,000 Mafia contract out on Kennedy should he receive the Democratic nomination.

There was no doubt that if Robert Kennedy became president, he would a) re-open the investigation on his brother’s death, and b) rejuvenate his efforts to destroy organized crime.

Carlos Marcello had remained good friends with L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen since they both had appeared before the McClellan hearings. By 1968, Cohen was in prison, having waged a full-scale war with the Dragna family for control of the rackets in Los Angeles, including the major racetracks that were all hooked into the Marcello’ s wire service and bookie network.

Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged killer of Robert Kennedy, worked as a groom at the Santa Anita race track controlled by Cohen, who had also been a close friend of Jack Ruby, the gangster who shot Oswald dead. Ruby was part of the Civello set-up in Dallas that was controlled by Marcello. That Robert Kennedy’s brother was himself shot dead in a city that was controlled by a close friend of Carlos Marcello, who was more than likely the immediate boss of the man who shot the man who shot the president, has to be surely more than just a coincidence

The elimination of Robert Kennedy from the 1968 presidential race paved the way for victory for Richard Nixon, the man Marcello had always supported. In the 1960 race between Kennedy and Nixon, Carlos had donated $500,000 towards Nixon’s campaign. With Robert Kennedy dead and Nixon’s accession to the presidency on Jan 20, 1969, Carlos Marcello had now a thread even to the White House.

Norfio Pecora and Joe Poretto, two of Carlos’ top men, were each married to a sister of D’Aston Smith, a close associate of Marcello. He was a good friend and confident of Murray Chotiner, who was one of Nixon’s closet advisors and confidants. He was also closely connected to the L.A. mobster, Mickey Cohen. He became Nixon’s special counsel in 1971 and used his influence to help secure a presidential pardon [from Nixon] for imprisoned labour leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was a very good friend of Carlos Marcello.

And so, the boss of the Louisiana Mafia now extended his reach into the White House.

In 1960, Carlos Marcello had handed over $500,000 in cash to Jimmy Hoffa, the corrupt head of the Teamsters Union. He was to arrange transfer of this into the campaign funds of Richard Nixon who was fighting election against John F. Kennedy. Hoffa and the Mob desperately wanted Nixon to win the election.

In 1973, Nixon was president and barnstorming through the White House trying to plug all the leaks that were spouting over Watergate, and recording it on tapes for posterity. He urgently needed $120,000 to pacify E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA official, who had organized the Watergate burglary. It is possible that this money came from Carlos.

There were many people who believed that Nixon and the Mafia were bedfellows. Martha Mitchell, wife of the former Attorney General told UPI reporters, "Nixon is involved with the Mafia." Nixon’s chief of staff, General Haig, even ordered an investigation into the president’s Mob ties through the Army’s Criminal Investigation Unit.

In 1972, Richard Nixon arranged an unprecedented presidential pardon for New Jersey mobster, Angelo DeCarlo, a feared killer and capo in the Genovese crime family. It seemed that Nixon was paying back favours for more financial contributions to his re-election campaign. If Nixon was linked to the Mob, there can be little doubt that one of his connections to it was Marcello.

... 

in September 1976, after much political and media activity, the 94th Congress established the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. ... One of the Committee’s first objectives was laid down by Staff Counsel, Robert Tannenbaum -- to investigate possible connections between Carlos Marcello and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Although the Committee had a huge catalogue of conspiratorial allegations to investigate, it was in the area of organized crime that they developed the deepest suspicion. The Committee concluded that probably three men were involved in a plot to murder President Kennedy: Jimmy Hoffa, Santo Trafficante Jr. and Carlos Marcello.

Jimmy Hoffa had disclosed his plans to murder both Kennedy brothers to Edward Grady Partin, a Louisiana teamster official, early in 1962. Jose Aleman documented Trafficante's involvement in front of the Committee, the wealthy Cuban exile who recounted the conversation he had with the Tampa mob boss in 1962, in which Santo had said that President Kennedy would "get hit."

But it was Marcello, above all, who was targeted by the investigation.  In the final report, the committee stated, "In its investigation of Marcello, the Committee identified the presence of critical evidentiary elements that was lacking with the other organized crime figures: creditable associations relating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to figures having a relationship, albeit tenuous, with Marcello’s crime family or organization."

When Carlos went off to prison in April 1983, he left a ship that was drifting. He lost most of his political influence almost immediately after he was behind bars ... His brother Joe, long the family’s underboss, lacked the energy and ambition to manage an enterprise as complicated and diverse as the one Carlos had controlled for almost forty years. He himself had only recently been under pressure as a result of an investigation.

In June 1982, [Joe] was indicted on charges of lying to a grand jury investigating the killing of a Texas judge. Joe had been overheard on a BRILAB tape discussing his involvement in the killing of Judge John H. Wood, Jr., who was shot dead outside his San Antonio home on May 29, 1979.  Three years later, Charles V. Harrelson (the father of movie and television star Woody Harrelson) was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Harrelson has always been identified as the tall man in the famous photograph of the three so-called "tramps" who were arrested in the railway yard behind Dealey Plaza, shortly after President Kennedy was shot. When he was arrested for the judge's murder, he confessed to the participating in the Kennedy assassination. He later retracted his statement, saying he made it under the influence of drugs.


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