Category: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

My review of Legacy of Secrecy was cross-posted at various sites on the web. And Ed Sherry did a mass mailing of it to his large JFK list. This caused some interesting feedback.

First off, there was a primary witness involved who can shed some light on how President Kennedy felt about the contingency plans. Some of which, like OPLAN 312, I specifically mentioned in my review. Sherry was temporarily based at Homestead AFB in Florida in November of 1962. He was an Army Intelligence officer who monitored the plans and kept track of all circulating copies from dawn to dusk. While in Florida on TDY from Virginia, he was temporary custodian of all 48 copies of the Contingency Plan for two weeks. He knew the subject well as he had typed in many of the revisions and addendums to the original plan. When Kennedy visited the base in late November of 1962, it was Sherry who typed the briefing for him on the plan. About ten days after Kennedy left Florida, Sherry recalls getting a classified code word to cancel the plans and return home. Kennedy was going to keep his word to the Russians about his no invasion pledge of Cuba. Sherry recalls that there were a lot of unhappy officers when JFK canceled the plans. Recall, these were contingency plans JFK was cancelling.

Second, another reader sent Sherry an e-mail concerning my review. Recall, according to Waldron and Hartmann, the coup was set for December 1, 1963. According to a CIA cable, the plotter in chief, Juan Almeida, was on a flight to Algeria on November 28th. He was the head of a 162 man Cuban delegation that had been arranged well in advance. This is incredible. What are we to believe in light of it? Almeida was going to run the coup and its resulting chaos from Africa? Further, this reader said the National Security Agency was monitoring traffic in Cuba closely at the time. They detected nothing suspicious going on there.

But it’s even worse than that. The reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) told Waldron about this a long time ago. And in fact, when I learned this, it did ring a bell with me. And sure enough, it is in Legacy of Secrecy. On page 280, Waldron and Hartmann mention the flight to Algeria. Ignoring the fact that the trip had been prearranged, they now try to say that Almeida left because Castro suspected something was going on. But what is the evidence he suspected Almeida? The authors list none. So why did Almeida leave if the coup was to take place within 72 hours, and he was to be running it from the island? If you can believe it, and you probably can, the authors never answer that question. They never even pose it. Since the evidence indicates that Almeida left because there was no coup scheduled, and he was not a part of it. In their nearly fanatical clinging to a discredited theory, Hartmann and Waldron remind us of the likes of David Belin, David Slawson and, even worse, John McAdams.

But perhaps even more shameful is the way their promoters cling to it also. In my review of Legacy of Secrecy, I mentioned one of them: Mark Crispin Miller. I also could have mentioned another, Gore Vidal. I know through two sources that Miller read my review of Ultimate Sacrifice. This did not stop him from promoting that book on his blog. And he later also praised Legacy of Secrecy. And in terms that are rather unrestrained. (In fact, they remind me of the bought and paid for movie blurbs that adorn the ads for so many lousy films these days.) Take this for example: “Legacy of Secrecy is the astounding sequel to their Ultimate Sacrifice, which came out in 2005; and this new volume is as thorough and meticulous in its research as it ground-breaking predecessor.” Further on, Miller writes, “…the authors demonstrate that the long suppression of the facts about Jack Kennedy ‘s murder set the stage for the killings, five years later, of both Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy.”

All of this breathless hyperbole makes me ask a sensible question: Did Miller read the books? As I discussed in my review of the latter book, the authors demonstrate no linkage between C-Day and the murders of King and RFK. How the heck could there be? The book says Ray killed King, and the weight of the evidence dictates that Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy. Was Ray in on C-Day? Was Sirhan?

And the last word I would use to describe the work of Hartmann and Waldron is “meticulous”. Even worse is ” ground-breaking”. What ground did they break? As I mentioned in my review of Legacy of Secrecy, Gus Russo wrote about the contingency plans years before Waldron and Hartmann did. And as I and others have proven nine ways to Sunday, the authors grievously mischaracterize them. And by doing so, they create a false theory, actually a misleading mythology. As for being meticulous, how can Miller write that with a straight face? What kind of meticulous writers deliberately disguise the source for Edwin Black’s wonderful work on the Chicago Plot? And once that is done, the same writers twist that work into something it is not. What kind of authors don’t even look up the proper date of Jim Garrison’s flight to New York with Russell Long? And then attribute something to those two men that could not have happened if they got the date right? Is hiding the name of Bernardo DeTorres from the reader “meticulous”? Is then altering his background from a dyed-in-the-wool CIA officer to a protÈgÈ of Trafficante meticulous? Yes, in one way it is: its meticulously misleading.

Miller’s mindless praise for these two awful books is so skewed that it made me wonder if he, like Waldron and Hartmann, had an agenda. It turns out he does. And like Vidal, it is to denigrate Oliver Stone’s film JFK. Consider the following: “…the authors show that that long cover-up was driven not by an enormous dark alliance of complicit US agencies and corporations … but by a lot of entities compelled by motives infinitely more prosaic. (Bobby also helped maintain the cover-up.)” Further on, Miller continues that although there was a conspiracy and the Warren Commission was a crock, “all such secrecy was not proof of complicity, as Oliver Stone would have us all believe … Rather, that cover-up but [sic] motivated by a raft of other, largely more innocuous … concerns …”

Of course, this is exactly what I wrote that the aim of Ultimate Sacrifice was. After my long analysis of how these “meticulous” researchers had altered the evidence, I concluded that they did this to detract from the real evidentiary trail and confabulate out of whole cloth an already discredited one: Robert Blakey’s Mafia did it theory. But they tried to disguise this around their phony C-Day scenario. Which has now collapsed.

But none of this matters to Miller. Why?

Because he has enlisted in the Noam Chomsky/Alex Cockburn ranks. Like them, he styles himself a leader of the Left. And he explains how that fits into his agenda about these two volumes: “These books are absolute must-reads because they liberate us from the dangerous assumption … that anyone who dares to speak up for the good will be cut down by violence, at the hands of an almighty, inescapable cabal. That fatalistic view is one that we cannot afford to hold-and one that is, in fact, unfounded, as these two books so powerfully demonstrate.”

The last thing I would say is that these two books “powerfully demonstrate” their thesis. I have demonstrated that in detail. When the Cuban coup leader is in Africa, you have some problems. When neither the Secretary of Defense, or State, or National Security Adviser or Director of Plans for the CIA knows about your upcoming invasion, you have more problems. When your chief “confessor” is suffering from Alzheimer’s while a jailhouse informant is coaxing him, well, that’s the ball game.

But, like Chomsky and Cockburn, this is beside the point for Miller. Facts don’t matter. And if facts don’t matter, then truth doesn’t matter either. Why? Because he knows what is good for the progressive public. And if they need to be served up pabulum, so be it.

I disagree with Miller. But I agree with Bob Tanenbaum, the first Chief Counsel of the JFK investigation for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And he knows a heck of a lot more about the JFK case than Miller or Vidal do. During a speech in Chicago in 1993, he outlined how the CIA, and especially David Phillips, obstructed his investigation into Oswald’s activities in Mexico City. And when he wanted to confront Phillips with perjury charges the committee backed down. He ended his speech by posing this question: “Does anybody really believe that certain people in the executive intelligence agencies are more equipped to handle the truth than the American people? If so, then we will redefine the nature of our democracy. And that’s something I’m not prepared to do.”

That’s the real question about all this. The question that Waldron and Hartmann wish to disguise. The question that the likes of Miller and Robert Stone don’t think the American public can handle. So in this regard, and with an almost cosmic irony, Stone and Miller resemble the former heads of the major networks, i.e. Bill Paley and David Sarnoff. Except the pabulum that Waldron and Hartmann give the public is not the old pig in a poke of the Warren Commission. But Blakey’s Mob did it pig. A pig with lipstick, eye shadow, and mascara.

But only someone either too ignorant or too willing to be gulled would have been taken in by the makeover.

The first time I heard Lamar Waldron’s name was through the auspices of Gus Russo. It was at the famous (or infamous) 1993 ASK Conference in Dallas. Now, after reading Waldron’s book Ultimate Sacrifice (co-written with Thom Hartmann), I think it is relevant and enlightening to describe some of the things that happened back in 1993. Somehow, some way, Russo had been given control over a panel and had also invited some rather odd guests to attend, e.g. Ed Butler. As described elsewhere (see my article on Russo in Probe Vol. 6 No. 2 p. 12) it was at this conference that Russo basically reversed course from his earlier days and went over to the “Krazy Kid Oswald” camp. He had completed work on his shockingly one-sided PBS special and at this conference he and Mark Zaid began to forcefully divorce themselves from any kind of conspiracy angle. For example: The late Larry Harris had gotten several witnesses to arrange themselves in Dealey Plaza. Zaid went there and passed out leaflets attempting to discredit them. Zaid also helmed a panel on Oswald and he proclaimed that Oswald had no ties to the intelligence community. Zaid also was screaming at people who used the Zapruder film to advocate conspiracy: “You know more than Dr. Luis Alvarez, huh!” The conference culminated in a shouting match between Dr. Cyril Wecht and Russo over his loaded PBS special.

It was during this singular conference that I first heard Lamar Waldron speak. Apparently, Waldron was another one of Russo’s invitees. On the panel he helmed, Russo had given Waldron a solid hour to expound on his “Project Freedom” thesis. This was an extraordinary amount of time: 20-25 minutes had been the outer limits before Waldron appeared. The talk Waldron gave has become one of the main concepts of the book under discussion. In retrospect, considering where Russo had been and was headed, I now fully understand why he was promoting Waldron. I recall listening to Waldron for about 10 minutes and being puzzled as to how the unconvincing hodge-podge he had assembled fit together. I walked out. When I returned he had fielded a question by mentioning that Robert Kennedy controlled JFK’s autopsy at Bethesda. Even at that time this idea was dubious simply because of, among other things, Pierre Finck’s testimony at the Clay Shaw trial. In light of that evidence I remember thinking: Lamar Waldron has an agenda the size of a football stadium.

After reading Ultimate Sacrifice I think I was wrong. Lamar Waldron has an agenda the size of the Grand Canyon. I can also see why Waldron needed an hour. The authors are nothing if not long winded. They make the likes of Joan Mellen, Dick Russell (in his revised version), and Noel Twyman look like models of brevity. The book’s text comes in at 786 pages. With photos, exhibits, and footnotes the hardcover edition is 875 pages. It was published by Carroll & Graf, a house that is notorious for skimping on editing, fact, and source checking (see the works of Harrison Livingstone.) As we shall see, this book needed serious help in all those areas. In no way does it justify its length. Most of the book is a tedious rehash of the work of dubious authors, so it could have easily been half as long. And what makes that aspect worse is, when all is said and done, they have not proven any of the central tenets of the volume. Even though, as we shall see, they have brazenly cherry-picked the evidence they present.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One deals with the so-called discovery of C-Day. That is, a plan for a coup in Cuba to be carried out by the Pentagon and the CIA. This would be coordinated with the murder of Castro by a secret collaborator on the island. The murder would be blamed on the Russians, this would create a crisis on the island and that would precipitate an invasion by a large flotilla of Cuban exiles led by Manuel Artime, Tony Varona, Eloy Menoyo, Manolo Ray and a group of Fort Benning trained Cuban militia. A provisional government would then be erected. This first part of the book also discusses the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro, two previous assassination attempts in Chicago and Tampa and profiles of major players involved in C-Day. (Part of the book’s turgidness comes from repetition. There was no need to discuss the two previous plots against JFK here since they are detailed much later.)

Part Two deals further with the CIA-Mafia plots, and what they see as the actual perceived build-up to the assassination by the Mob. Part Three is essentially a chronicle of November 1963. It includes longer versions of the Chicago and Tampa attempts, the actual assassination, and how that impacted C-Day, and a final chapter entitled The Legacy of Secrecy, in which the authors trace how the assassination enabled a cover-up of C-Day and how this had an effect on events afterwards.

If one examines the text, the first of many curious aspects becomes evident. The longest part of the volume is the middle section, which is not actually about C-Day. It is really about the Mob’s motivation, planning, pretexts, and precedents for killing JFK. And this is really the subject of the last section also. So by my rough estimate, about 2/3 of the book is not about what the author’s trumpet as their great discovery. The larger part of the book is actually a kind of concentration and aggrandizement of all the Mob-did-it books rolled into one. As we shall see, this book is actually a new (and fatuous) spin on an old and discredited idea, namely Robert Blakey’s Mob-did-it theory. The reader can see this just by browsing through the footnotes, which I did for this review. The familiar faces are all there: John Davis, Dan Moldea, Blakey, the HSCA volumes, David Scheim, even, startling enough, Frank Ragano. They are all quoted abundantly and, as we shall see, indiscriminately. I can literally say that this book would not exist in its present (bloated) form without that gallery of authors.

But before dealing with that aspect of the book, let’s deal with Part One, where Waldron and Hartmann present the concept of C-Day to us. The plan I summarized above was scheduled for December 1, 1963, nine days after JFK was killed. The sources for this is a series of CIA documents codenamed AM/WORLD, interviews with former Kennedy Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and a man named Harry Williams who was a friend of Bobby Kennedy’s and was allegedly coordinating this plan with the exiles.

In the hardcover edition of the book, they do not name the coup leader, but they very strongly hint that it was Che Guevara. They do everything except underline his name in this regard. Whole chapters are written about him. Now, considering that, I had a hard time digesting the logic of AM/WORLD. As anyone would who has read the history of Castro’s revolution. We are to believe that Che Guevara, the man who came to symbolize worldwide Marxist rebellion, would betray that lifetime struggle, murder his partner in revolution, ally himself with the capitalist colossus of the north, and blame the murder of his friend on his Russian communist allies. Further, he would then cooperate in a provisional government with the likes of CIA stooges like Artime and Varona. Had Che Guevara undergone a rapid and extreme conversion without anyone noticing? Did the bearded revolutionary icon really believe that by killing Castro and throwing in his lot with Artime, Varona and the CIA that he would be purifying the communist zeal of 1959 which Castro had somehow subdued?

To put this strange scenario on the page, the authors leave out some facts that made Che Guevara the living legend he was. And also the facts of his death, when he was hunted down and killed in Bolivia with the help of the CIA. (Poor devil, he actually thought the guys who killed him were his allies.) Let’s fill in some of those expurgated pages. After Castro’s revolution took hold, he began rounding up all the higher ups left over from the Batista government. He then arranged a series of show trials before he imprisoned and/or executed them. The number put before the firing squad is estimated at about four hundred and up. The man in charge of the phony trials and summary executions was Che Guevara. So the idea that he would turn around and be palsy-walsy with Artime and Varona, who were much closer to Batista than to him, is kind of weird. In 1959 he may have had them shot or imprisoned. Second, one of the reasons Che left Cuba is that he wanted to spread the Marxist revolt abroad, whereas Castro was trying to solidify it at home. Yet the authors want us to believe that Guevara would put an end to this foothold right in the place he struggled to establish it. Third, during the Missile Crisis, it was feared that the US would launch a huge armada to invade the island. The Russians had given the Cubans not just ballistic missiles, but tactical nukes. Reportedly these were under the control of the Cubans. It was Che Guevara who urged Castro to use them to vaporize any invasion crossing the Caribbean. If you buy this book, a year later he was inviting them with open arms to take over the island he was willing to partially nuke in order to save. Maybe Che Guevara had a nervous breakdown in the interim? Or did he really believe that Artime, Varona and the CIA would allow him, Ray and Menoyo to construct a leftist paradise after the invasion?

Evidently, others, like David Talbot in Salon, had some trouble with this aspect of the book. So in the trade paper version, the authors changed their tune. The new identity of the coup leader is Juan Almeida. Now Almeida does not really fit the profile the authors describe in the hardcover version. That is, a person of such enormous stature and appeal that he could seamlessly replace Castro, convincingly blame the murder on the Russians, and then set up this Provisional Government with a group of people who had invaded their country two years ago and then almost nuked it 13 months before. Further, he is still alive and in the titular position of Revolution Commander. There is a recent photo of him with Raul Castro at a session of the National Assembly in Havana. It was after the trade paper version was released. I wonder what the conversation was like between the two when Raul learned of Juan’s plan to murder his brother, and probably him, and turn the country over to the CIA, the Pentagon, and Artime.

What makes this switch even more bracing is the person who rode to the rescue for Waldron and Hartmann. It was none other than Liz Smith. The same Liz Smith who is always good for a blurb on the books of John Davis. Who is always there for a “Kennedys and the murder of Monroe” spiel (which, predictably, figures in this volume on pp. 402-407). And who has always been an avid promoter of Judith Exner. In fact she penned the last installment before Exner passed away. (Of course, Exner appears here more than once.) In her column in the New York Post dated 9/22/06 she says she found out about the coup leader’s actual identity through some new CIA documents. Hmmm. (She is not known as an ace archival researcher.)

Another interesting aspect of this coup in Cuba idea is who knew about it and who did not. According to Talbot, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did not know. Even though the authors insist that it was more a Pentagon operation than a CIA one. (Even more puzzling: they state on p,. 42 that the operation could rise to the level of a full-scale invasion by US forces. When were they going to tell McNamara, the day before?) And although the authors use Rusk to bolster their claim, he says he did not know about it at the time, but learned about it later. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy did not know about it either since he told author David Corn that in 1963, the operations against Cuba were winding down to a dribble. So the three highest Cabinet level officers, who should have known about such an operation, somehow were left in the dark.

But the authors know who was in the light. They were:

• Jack Ruby 
• Guy Banister
• David Ferrie
• David Morales
• Howard Hunt
• John Martino
• Richard Nixon
• Carlos Prio
• Santo Trafficante
• Jimmy Hoffa
• Carlos Marcello
• Sam Giancana
• Johnny Roselli
• David Phillips
• Rolando Masferer
• Bernard Barker
• James McCord
• Michael Mertz
• Charlie Nicoletti
• Gilberto Lopez
• Richard Cain
• Frank Sturgis
• George Nonte

And I saved the best for last: Lee Harvey Oswald. So the Kennedys were so careless that the word about this secret operation leaked out to people like Ruby and Ferrie; but yet they were paradoxically so careful that they managed to keep it from McNamara. Now some people would think this odd. The authors anticipate this by saying that some people in the administration knew and some did not. They even go to the lengths of depicting meetings at which some know about it and some do not. (p. 51) Even when it’s actually under discussion. Yet, to use a figurative example, McNamara never said to Richard Helms, “Dick, did you say we were sponsoring a coup in Cuba next month?” To which Helms must have replied, “Oh no Bob, the Cubana Coupe is a new car model I’m buying.”

The aspect of who knew and who did not is so tenuous, so questionable, so minutely balanced on the head of a pin that serious questions arise about those who the authors say were witting. As stated above, Helms was supposed to be knowledgeable about C-Day. Yet there is a revelatory anecdote about this issue in his book, A Look Over My Shoulder (pgs 226-227). Helms got word of a large arms cache that had landed in Venezuela from Cuba. It was allegedly shipped to help some communist guerillas there. In other words, Castro was exporting revolution into South America. Something the Kennedys did not want him to do. Helms was so alarmed by this that he personally went over to see Robert Kennedy to plead his case for emergency action. After all it was three tons of armaments. RFK passed on it and told him to go see the president. He did and he even took over one of the rifles supposedly found, presumably to convince JFK of the urgency of the situation. Here was the casus belli. Yet JFK was non-plussed. But Helms did salvage something for his efforts. He asked for and got a photo of Kennedy.

What I find so interesting about this episode is the date Helms places it on: November 19, 1963. Did Helms forget C-Day was coming up in 12 days? Did he want to move it up because he knew the Mafia was going to kill JFK? Was it all a silly charade? Or maybe Helms just wanted the picture. But that’s not all. In Joseph B. Smith’s book Portrait of A Cold Warrior (p. 383), he refers to the seizure of this cache of arms. He apparently got some reports on it, and skillful and veteran analyst he was, he quickly deduced it was planted. So if we take Ultimate Sacrifice seriously, Helms went to the trouble of creating a phony provocation when he knew that C-Day was less than two weeks off.

But the capper is this: both the Helms and Smith books appear in the footnotes to Ultimate Sacrifice.

David Talbot raised an interesting point about the central thesis. If the Kennedys were sponsoring a coup in Cuba for December 1st, why would the Mafia, and some Cubans, conspire to assassinate him nine days before? It’s especially odd since one would think that the exile Cubans who Waldron and Hartmann say knew about it, like say Masferer and Sturgis, would likely want it to succeed. After all, they had been working for this for years. Interestingly, the authors don’t even mention some of the Cubans who are highly suspect in the JFK case, like say Bernardo DeTorres and Sergio Arcacha Smith. Now, if Smith was involved in JFK’s murder, it is really odd. He was part of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) as was Varona, who the authors maintain was one of the major players in the operation. Yet Varona apparently never told his colleague Smith. Or maybe there was nothing to tell. For as Bill Davy noted in Probe Magazine (Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 5), FBI informants within the CRC, including leader Jose Miro Cardona, were disgusted with Kennedy in 1963 over his Cuba policy. After a high level meeting in Washington, Cardona came away with the feeling that “the United States policy is now one of peaceful co-existence with Communist Cuba.” More to the point, “the United States has no plan to free Cuba of Communism.” The Justice Department report continued that the CRC’s feeling about the US was “very bad, and they feel they had been abandoned in their fight.” Is this perhaps why people like Smith and DeTorres became suspect in the JFK case and why Smith tried to set up the seemingly pro-Castro Oswald, in order to provoke an attack against Cuba? You won’t read a sentence about that in Ultimate Sacrifice.

Although the authors mention the Lisa Howard/William Attwood back channel to Castro in the attempt for dÈtente with Cuba, they downplay it (p. 113), and later they actually dismiss it as meaningless. They also do not mention Kennedy’s 1963 letter to Khruschev, which Davy quotes: “I have neither the intention nor the desire to invade Cuba. I consider that it is for the Cuban people themselves to choose their destiny.” (Davy, op. cit.) And of course, Waldron and Hartmann ignore the important Peter Kornbluh article in Cigar Aficionado (summarized in Probe, Vol. 7 No. 1 pp. 8-9). Probably because it paints a quite different picture of the quest for dÈtente. When Castro learned of Kennedy’s death, he told JFK’s envoy in the process, “This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed.” And as Kornbluh notes, Castro was right. LBJ pursued it no further.

This rigorous, systematic refusal to acknowledge or confront contrary evidence is nowhere more demonstrable than in the treatment of the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis. One would think that in a book concentrating on Cuban-American relations from 1960-63, these two events would get special treatment. One would be dead wrong. Combined they get all of five pages. Even though there have been reams of documents declassified on both events by the Assassinations Records Review Board, they use none of it. Incredibly, they ignore both the CIA Inspector General Report by Lyman Kirkpatrick, and the White House sponsored Taylor Report on the Bay of Pigs. Concerning the Missile Crisis, they fail to quote from the landmark book The Kennedy Tapes, which is the closest thing we have to a verbatim account of the crisis. This was unfortunate for me since I wanted to get their take on why JFK would not OK an invasion during those two events when everyone in the situation room was demanding it, yet he would OK one in 1963 when tensions had decreased and fewer people were egging him on. If you essentially skimp the two incidents, you can dodge the question.

The second part of the book is about the plotting of the Mafia Dons to assassinate President Kennedy. It also discusses the idea that the Mob discovered the C-Day plan, and then used this to somehow cover up their murder plot. This is the new twist to another Mob based scenario.

This part of the book is heavily — and I mean heavily — reliant on the authors of three decades ago whose books were spawned by the work of the House Select Committee’s unremitting focus on the Mob. Waldron and Hartmann line them all up and use them profusely and without care: Dan Moldea, John Davis, Robert Blakey and Dick Billings, David Scheim. Even Frank Ragano and Aaron Kohn appear. As we shall see, some of the statements made in this section of the book are rather startling.

But even I was surprised at what the authors pulled in Chapter 33. Like Joan Mellen, they want to rewrite the history of the CIA-Mafia plots. To do so they question the best source we have on that subject, namely the 1967 Inspector General Report done for Richard Helms at the request of President Johnson. They say it is incomplete and that it leaves out certain aspects. Maybe this is so, and maybe it is not. For instance, there are rumors that the writers of the report actually did interview John Roselli. Did Waldron and Hartmann actually stumble upon this tape, or transcript or at least the interviewer? Is this what they found that was left out? That would truly be new and important.

But that isn’t it. What is it then? None other than Dan Moldea (pp. 380-390).

They actually say that material in Moldea’s 1978 book The Hoffa Wars should have been in the IG Report. I had to smile.

Let me explain. After I read Moldea’s disgraceful book on the RFK case, I was shocked at its shoddiness (Probe Vol. 5 No. 4, p. 10, and The Assassinations pgs 610-631). I wondered how someone like this ever got started. So I went back and borrowed his first volume, the book on Hoffa. I took 30 pages of notes and came to the conclusion that it was almost as bad as his RFK book. (I never reviewed it since we decided to discontinue Probe.) Since Moldea is relying a lot on Walter Sheridan and other such sources, the portrait of Hoffa is aggrandized and sensationalized. The reason for this is twofold. Sheridan furnished Moldea with his prime witness against Hoffa, Ed Partin. Second, Moldea was writing right after the revelations of the Church Committee Report, which exposed in public the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Partin, Sheridan, and Moldea had a problem with those plots. Hoffa wasn’t in on them. So Sheridan let Moldea borrow Partin so he could further his mendacious magic act. And Waldron and Hartmann suck this all up — and expand it even further.

But being indiscriminate with a writer like Moldea is like a boxer leaving his chin exposed in the ring. You’re looking for trouble. When Sheridan was heralding Partin as his star witness he had to do a lot of rehab work on him. Because writers like Fred Cook had shown that Partin had a criminal record that, to say the least, was rather compromising. So he decided to give Partin a lie detector test. Needless to say, since Sheridan arranged it, he passed with flying colors. But years later, something interesting happened to this test. A professional society of polygraph technicians got hold of the raw data from it. They were worried that less than scrupulous people were abusing legal ethics in using the machine. So a team of the country’s leading experts studied the results and unveiled their findings at a convention. They concluded that Partin was deceptive throughout, but he almost broke the machine at the part where he related Hoffa’s plot to murder RFK. Partin was so bad that the society deduced that the administrator of the test had to turn down the detection device to ensure the results Sheridan wanted. Ace archivist Peter Vea mailed me these documents over a decade ago and I discussed them at the 1995 COPA Conference in Washington. Vea later sent me a newspaper story about one of the original technicians being later convicted for fraud. So the information has been out there for about 12 years. Somehow, Waldron and Hartmann missed it. (And so did Moldea since he was still vouching for Partin in 1997 when his RFK book was published.)

But as I said, Moldea’s book came out in 1978. Well after Hoffa was convicted and passed away so mysteriously. So the act Partin did for Sheridan was not enough for Moldea. Watergate and the Church Committee had occurred in the interim. So for Moldea, Partin added some current sex appeal to his already fatuous story. He now told Moldea that Carlos Marcello contributed a half million to Nixon’s campaign in 1968 (Moldea pp. 108, 260). The go-between was Hoffa. Hoffa was also supplying arms to Castro before he took over Cuba (Ibid. p. 107). Waldron and Hartmann use these tales and source them to Moldea– without telling the reader that the source is Partin! At one point they even refer to this proven liar as a most trusted source. In this day and age, with all we know about Partin, this is academic irresponsibility.

But if Moldea is bad, what can one say about Frank Ragano? Ragano is mentioned many times by Moldea in his Hoffa book. Ragano was an attorney for Hoffa, Marcello and Trafficante. He did this for many years. And during this time, many of these Mafia did it books emerged. But it was not until Oliver Stone’s JFK came out that he decided to write about how his three clients conspired to kill President Kennedy. The other curious thing about the timing of Ragano’s 1993 book Mob Lawyer, is that he was in trouble with the IRS over back taxes and cried out that he was being persecuted: perhaps for his much delayed broadcast about his clients assassination conspiracy? Or maybe he was just using the delayed expose to plea bargain the charge down? Whatever the case, Ragano made two mistakes in his coming out party. First, he sold Moldea the old chestnut about Jim Garrison’s investigation of Clay Shaw being a method to divert attention away from Marcello. I exposed this for the canard it was at the 1994 COPA Conference, and Bill Davy expanded on it in his book, Let Justice Be Done (pgs 149-167). Evidently, Ragano had not done his homework on the issue. And that crack investigative reporter Moldea was not up to checking it out beforehand. (See Ragano’s biography at spartacus.schoolnet.) Second, Ragano tried to get cute and was a bit too specific about Trafficante’s convenient deathbed confession to him. He said it occurred on March 13, 1987 in Tampa. He says the ailing Don called him and asked him to come down and pick him up. When Ragano arrived to take him for a spin, the dying 72-year-old Mob boss trotted out to the car in pajamas and robe. He told Ragano that he and his underworld cohorts had erred. They should have killed Bobby, not John. His conscience cleansed by his confession to his consigliore, Trafficante passed away a few days later.

Unfortunately for Ragano, Tony Summers checked up on his belatedly revealed tale. According to Summers, who sources several witnesses, Trafficante was living in Miami in March of 1987 and had not been to Tampa for months. He was very ill at the time and was receiving kidney dialysis and carrying a colostomy bag. Further, Summers interviewed at least two witnesses who placed Trafficante in Miami on that day. There are also hospital records that put him in Miami’s Mercy Hospital for dialysis treatment on both the day before and the day after the Ragano “confession”. And Trafficante’s doctor in Tampa said he was not there on March 13th. (Vanity Fair 12/94) Now, from Miami to Tampa is about 280 miles. To think that a 72 year old dying man would drive four hours one way and then four hours back — between dialysis treatments — to do something he could have done with a call on a pay phone strains credulity to the breaking point. To postulate that he would fly the distance is just as bad. Did he buy two seats in order to put his colostomy bag next to him? Ragano told Summers he could produce other witnesses. But only if he was sued for libel. Since it is next to impossible for a family to sue for a deceased member over libel, Ragano was being real gutsy.

Another spurious author used extensively in this section is Davis, who they refer to as a “noted historian” (p.264) and later (p. 768) as an “acclaimed historian.” (The authors are quite liberal in their use of the term “historian”: Tony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, even Tad Szulc are all given the title. Yet none of them are historians.) Others, like Bill Davy and myself have questioned the methodology of this “noted historian”. As I once wrote of him, although Davis likes to use a large bibliography to lend weight and academic ballast to his work, he does not footnote his text. And as Davy and I have both pointed out, even the freight of his pretentious bibliography is spurious. In his two books on the JFK assassination, Mafia Kingfish and The Kennedy Contract, Davis listed two primary sources: the transcript of the Clay Shaw trial and 3, 000 pages of CIA documents. He said they were housed at Southeastern Louisiana University at Hammond. Davy checked and I called. They aren’t there. (Probe Vol. 5, No.1, p. 9) In that same issue, in discussing his Kennedy biography, Dynasty and Disaster, I showed how Davis distorted his sources to twist words and events into something they do not really mean. And sometimes into the opposite of what they mean. I then demonstrated how his lack of footnoting made this hard to detect for a novice.

But Ultimate Sacrifice ignores all this. The book uses Davis, and even some of the claims that Davy actually addressed head on. For instance: the 7,000-dollar payoff, which Marcello supposedly admitted in his HSCA executive session testimony. The problem here is he actually didn’t admit it. (Ibid) Further, Davy and I interviewed U.S. Attorney Jon Volz who was in on the prosecution that put Marcello away. He and his cohorts listened to years of surveillance on Marcello, including the storied “Brilab tapes”. Volz told us, “There’s nothing on those tapes.” (Ibid). In fact, Volz told us that far from the fearsome, all-inspiring Mafia Don Davis makes him out to be, Marcello was kind of slow and dull. Further, Waldron and Hartmann use their “noted historian”, to make Marcello an all encompassing Mafia Superman, his Hitlerian reach extending throughout ten states, Central America, the Caribbean and beyond. (Ultimate Sacrifice p. 264). Funny, because Volz told us that, by the time he prosecuted him, Marcello was not even the number one godfather in Louisiana. Anthony Carolla was.

But Waldron and Hartmann need to use Davis to exalt Marcello because they want us to believe, as Davis and Blakey do, that Marcello was reaching through to Oswald through Guy Banister and David Ferrie. Repeatedly, throughout the volume, Ferrie and Banister are referred to as “working for Marcello.”. In no other book I have ever encountered have I seen this rubric used with these two men anywhere to the extent it appears here. Further, Banister and Ferrie are pretty much cleaned off of their other well-documented ties to the CIA and the FBI. There is almost no mention of Ferrie’s ties to the Bay of Pigs, how he trained Cuban exiles for that operation, how he engineered aquatic equipment like a miniature submarine, how he watched films of the debacle with his friend Sergio Arcacha Smith. There is also no mention of Ferrie’s attempts to recruit young men for MONGOOSE. And it’s almost the same for Banister. Again, this was an eccentric trend that was started with Blakey and Billings at the end of the HSCA. Ferrie had worked for Wray Gill, one of Marcello’s local attorneys. So Blakey shorthanded this into Ferrie working for Marcello. In 1962 and 1963, Ferrie got Banister some investigatory work through his Gill employment. But not even the HSCA and Blakey construed this as Banister being an employee of Marcello. Waldron and Hartmann do this throughout. Again, this is deceptive and journalistically irresponsible. But, as I will show later, its part of a grand design.

But it’s not just Marcello who gets the Superman treatment. Apparently modeling themselves on Davis, they attempt to enlarge John Roselli beyond any dimensions I have ever read. Roselli was seen previously as a second tier Mafia figure, right below the top Godfathers who sat on the national council. And his affable demeanor, brains, and facility in conversation made him a good ambassador and envoy for the Cosa Nostra to gain entry into things like the film business and the CIA-Mafia plots. This book goes way beyond that to places I had never seen or imagined. Did you know that Roselli was somehow in on the murder of Castillo Armas in Guatemala in 1957? How about the assassination of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1961? If you can believe it, the dapper, satin shirted, silk tied Roselli was in training with the Cuban exiles at JM/WAVE. He even makes an appearance at Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street. Roselli is somehow involved with Marilyn Monroe in a mÈnage a trois with Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana before she tries to warn the FBI about a Mob hit on RFK. (This whole episode with Monroe has to be read to be believed. Its on pages 405-409.) And with Waldron and Hartmann, its Roselli who introduced Judith Exner to Senator Kennedy, since Roselli is trying to play it safe in the 1960 election (p. 390). And as the Mob plot heats up, he maneuvers her around to somehow monitor JFK.

Except it’s not true. Unfortunately, I read Exner’s book My Story (see The Assassinations pp. 329-338 for my essay on Exner). In that book, Exner describes her first meeting with Senator Kenendy. She met him through a dinner hosted by Peter Lawford and Frank Sinatra (see pp. 86-89). In that book, contrary to what Ultimate Sacrifice clearly implies, there is not a hint that John Roselli had anything to do with her relations with JFK. In their further aggrandizement of Roselli, they attempt to place him in Dallas on 11/22/63 but they qualify this by saying that none of the sources meet their standard of reliability. (p. 712) But they state the accusation anyway by noting the multiplicity of accounts. Also, according to them, Roselli had no alibi for that day. When I looked up their multiplicity of sources, I smiled and shook my head. The three were James Files, Robert Plumlee, and Chauncey Holt. Gary Aguilar wrote a searing expose on the whole Files affair, which resulted in a rather embarrassing video on the JFK case. (Probe Vol. 3 No. 6 p. 27) Plumlee has been marketing his story for years about flying various people in and out of Dallas before and after the assassination. He figured in one of the early cuts of that video which the producer tried to sell to investors. The late Chauncey Holt was trying to sell himself as one of the three tramps for a number of years. The fact that the authors include these men is critical comment in and of itself.

But even using all these dubious books and authors, with their questionable sources and bibliographies, Waldron and Hartmann still suffer greatly from the “conditional syndrome”. That is, something can happen only if something else occurs i.e. the contingency or assumption factor. To give the reader a representative sample:

• If Roselli had told David Morales that Ruby would be helpful in the fall 1963 CIA-Mafia plot, Morales would have had no reason to doubt him. (565)
• It is possible that the call was related to Oswald…or a trip Ruby would soon make to Chicago… (566)
• And even on November 1, Ferrie might have flown to Chicago instead of back to New Orleans, if the Chicago assassination plan had not been uncovered …(577)
• Phillips was saying that about Oswald in the context of an autobiographical novel, but it could indicate that the CIA’s “plan we had devised against Castro” was similar to the way JFK was killed. (p. 580)
• The sad thing is that the Mafia may have taken the very plan that the CIA had intended to use against Castro…and used it instead to kill JFK in an open limousine. That could account for the comments of Bobby and David Atlee Phillips after JFK’s death. (P. 581)

And my favorite:

• Morales probably engaged in business with Trafficante associate John Martino in the years after JFK’s death. On the other hand, Morales may have simply provided help and information to Roselli during his nighttime drinking binges. (p. 584, italics are mine in all excerpts)

I am reminded of Cyril Wecht’s response to one of Michael Baden’s inventive rationales for the single bullet theory: “Yeah, and if my mother had a penis she’d be my father.” The book is literally strewn with these kinds of “would have” “could have” “might have” scenarios. In the sample above, I culled from a span of 20 pages and I cited six passages, leaving at least one other one out. Go ahead and do the math for a text of 786 pages. There must be well into the hundreds of these Rumsfeldian “unkown unknowns” populating this book– like autumn leaves in a Pennsylvania backyard. When I wrote my introduction to Bill Davy’s fine work, Let Justice Be Done, I noted that one of its qualities is the author used very few of these types of clauses. He didn’t have to. I also noted that the Mafia theory advocates were noted for these kinds of contingency phrases. Since Ultimate Sacrifice is essentially the “Mega Mob Did It” opus, it amplifies the usage of them exponentially. Which leaves one to ask: If you need so many of these clauses then what is the real value of the book and its research?

Hand in glove with the above feature is the “he had dinner with him” syndrome. Peter Dale Scott’s works were rich in this kind of thing and then Robert Blakey brought it to new heights in the field. Waldron and Hartmann continue in this tradition.

• Back in Dallas on Thursday evening November 20, Ruby had dinner with … Ralph Paul. Paul was associated with Austin’s Bar-B-Cue, where one of the part-time security guards was policeman J. D. Tippit. (p. 713)
• The Teamster organizer was an associate of Frank Chavez, linked to Jack Ruby by FBI reports. (p. 740)
• Ruby called the home of friend Gordon McLendon, owner of KLIF radio, who was close to David Atlee Phillips and had a connection to Marcello. (747)

If you use the sources the authors use, and a lot of conditional phrasing, and you make the connections as oblique and inconsequential as a Bar-B-Cue pit, then you can just about connect almost anything and anyone. Sort of like the Six Degrees of Separation concept. You can even come close to duplicating that masterpiece of disinformation, Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, aka The Torbitt Document (which is not a document and is therefore even deceptive in its nickname.) The point is that now, with the work of the ARRB, we don’t need to do this anymore. Waldron and Hartmann want to take us back to the Torbitt days.

In this middle section of the book, which allegedly describes the plotting of the assassination, appear some of the most bizarre statements and chapters I have encountered in the JFK library of books. Which is saying a lot. After reading chapters 29-31, I actually wrote in my notes, “The preceding three chapters are three of the most ridiculous I have ever read in the literature.”

But that is par for the course in this book. Did you know that:

1. Guy Banister joined the plot because he was a segregationist. (pp. 457-458)
2. John Roselli personally met RFK in Miami prior to the Missile Crisis. (This is on pp 408-409 and comes via Moldea and the incontinent Gerry Hemming.)
3. The USA continued to support the corrupt and brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua because the Somozas knew too much about C-Day. ( p.158)
4. Banister encountered Oswald in New Orleans in the first quarter of 1963 and relayed the information that he would be a perfect patsy for JFK to Marcello. (p. 456)
5. Hoffa attempted to actually strangle RFK to death with his bare hands in a Justice Department office. (p. 430)
6. Marilyn Monroe committed suicide because the Mob was pressuring her to blackmail RFK. (p. 407)
7. In 1963 Oswald was about to announce to the nation his undercover role in an effort to achieve dÈtente between the Soviet Union and America. (p. 458, 463)
8. Senator Thomas Dodd was above reproach. (p. 462.)
9. It was Banister who got Oswald to take a shot at Edwin Walker in an attempt to get publicity for a white supremacist ally. (p. 467)
10. The Mafia arranged for Antonio Veciana to meet with Oswald and Phillips in 1963. (p. 485)

These are all strained at best. And some — like the Nicaragua charge — are jocular. Some fly in the face of direct evidence. (For the case against Dodd for instance, see Probe Vol. 3 No. 5, Vol. 3 No. 6, and Vol. 6 No.2, plus Bob Tanenbaum’s novel Corruption of Blood for his own suspicions of the man.) In the face of all this the idea that Dodd is “beyond reproach” is goofy.

Part Three of Ultimate Sacrifice deals with the attempts on President Kennedy’s life in Chicago and Tampa, the assassination in Dallas, the ensuing cover-ups of the assassination and C-Day, and the effects of all this for the country. Waldron and Hartmann lend great import to Chicago and Tampa and depict them both as being Mob-oriented, and later of being covered up because of some revelations about C-Day. The evidence about the latter is pretty much diaphanous. But some of the circumstances surrounding the Chicago attempt are interesting. And what the authors do with them is even more so.

The authors declare that their treatment of the Chicago attempt is the most extensive yet. Whether it is or isn’t, it is almost indecipherable. Through their usual tortuous logic and maneuvering, they somehow get Michael Mertz on the scene (with the help of the always useful Gerry Hemming.) They attempt to link the man who was being set up, Thomas A. Vallee, to John Martino, simply because Valle had once been a member of the John Birch Society and Martino was part of their Speaker’s Bureau. (p. 630) They conclude that Trafficante, Roselli and Marcello were behind the whole thing and Richard Cain was in on the cover up. The book cites former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden who says that two of the suspected four man hit team were named Rodriguez and Gonzalez. They then surmise that those Hispanic names are important because those were two names of members in the Tampa branch of the FPCC. Which, in a spellbinding leap of logic, they connect to the Chicago attempt. (p. 625)

One of the major sources that Ultimate Sacrifice uses for the two chapters on Chicago is a writer named Edwin Black. Today, Edwin Black is an illustrious author of several famous books like War on the Weak, which is about how famous philanthropies sponsored eugenics experiments in America, and The Transfer Agreement, which is about the founding of the Israeli state. .

Unlike Ultimate Sacrifice, if you read Black, you get the idea that the Secret Service actually did a fair job once they were tipped off. Even though understaffed, they got help from the local police and did a quick job in apprehending Vallee and rolling up part of the cell. All of this was done before JFK’s scheduled arrival (which was eventually cancelled). Another difference is that although Bolden is a major source for Black, there is no mention of the two surnames, Gonzalez and Rodriguez. And then there are the important things Black discovered which Ultimate Sacrifice leaves out. Consider:

1. Like Oswald, Vallee was a former Marine who was stationed at a U-2 base in Japan. (Black, p. 5)
2. Like Oswald, the cover unit for Vallee’s probable CIA recruitment was something called Joint Technical Advisory Group.(ibid)
3. Vallee had spoken bitterly of JFK, “We lost a lot of good men at the Bay of Pigs. (Ibid. p. 6)
4. One of the men who arrested him, Dan Groth, was suspected of being a CIA undercover agent. And Groth inexplicably left off his arrest report the fact that Vallee had 750 rounds of live ammo in the trunk of his car. Further he said his notation of “M-1 rifle” on the report was a typo. This was one reason why Vallee could not be detained, since the charge for pulling him over — which was nothing but a pretext–was a minor traffic infraction. (Ibid p. 31)

But the most startling thing Ultimate Sacrifice leaves out is the codename of the original FBI informant who tipped off the Secret Service. It was “Lee”. (Black, p. 5)

Instead of all the Sturm und Drang Ultimate Sacrifice presents, if one reads Black one could conclude that Oswald was doing in Chicago what he did in New Orleans. As revealed later by FBI worker William Walter, although Oswald was serving as a CIA agent provocateur, he was also a likely informant for the FBI. And in the milieu he worked — the CIA and rightwing sponsored Cuban exile community — he tipped off the Bureau as to a plot he heard concerning the murder of JFK in Dallas. According to Black, he may have done it in Chicago also. One could also conclude that Groth screwed up his arrest report so that Vallee could not be thoroughly interrogated. And finally, Black adds that while he was pursuing his inquiry into the Chicago attempt, he was followed and investigated not by the Mafia, but by the DIA. (Black, p. 3)

Until I read this book I did not know Black had written about the Kennedy assassination. Jim Douglass, who contributed to The Assassinations, pointed something out to me. Although Ultimate Sacrifice uses Edwin Black, you could never locate his original work from it. For if you try and match up the mentions of his name and use of his material in the text to the footnotes, you will discover something puzzling. Namely, you can’t. The authors footnote Edwin Black’s work to a man named George Black and to George Black’s book entitled The Good Neighbor. When you find The Good Neighbor, you will see that there is nothing in it about President Kennedy’s assassination. The book is about US foreign policy in Central America. Douglass, who is writing his own book on the JFK case, sent me Edwin Black’s actual essay on Chicago. That long essay was the cover story of a periodical titled Chicago Independent dated November 1975, which was edited by Black and his wife. You won’t find this essay in the footnotes in the two chapters about Chicago in Ultimate Sacrifice. To dismiss this mismatching as all a mistake one must believe the following:

1. Waldron and Hartmann confused two completely different authors
2. They confused two completely different subjects
3. They mistook a book for a magazine article.

One other aspect of this scholarly failure puzzles me. Waldron and Hartmann have about eleven footnotes to George Black’s book. Not one of them cites a page number. Probably because they can’t. Try and find another book they use for multiple but blind citations. The reason I find this all so bracing is that when I read Edwin Black’s essay I was struck by how clear it was compared to Ultimate Sacrifice, how different the interpretation of events was, and — as I have shown here — the crucial things what Waldron and Hartmann leave out. Ninety nine percent–or more–of the book’s readership can’t really conclude this or see the difference in the two treatments. When one does see the difference one has to at least postulate that the authors of Ultimate Sacrifice didn’t want you to find Edwin Black’s essay. Why?

The work on the alleged Mob oriented Tampa plot directly follows the two chapters on Chicago. It begins with the rather hoary Joseph Milteer-William Somersett taped conversation. Somersett was an FBI informant who recorded his calls with Milteer. Milteer was a moderately well off southern racist who was associated with the extremist anti-civil rights group the National States Rights Party (NSRP). Somersett shared his beliefs but was against the use of violence to achieve them. On the tape, Milteer talks about a possible scenario for killing Kennedy with a high-powered rifle from a tall building.

To say the least, it is problematic to use Milteer for the Tampa scenario since according to many sources (Henry Hurt, Michael Benson, Anthony Summers), if Milteer is talking about any location on the tape, it is Miami not Tampa. Further, Milteer had no detectable ties to the Mafia. But that doesn’t daunt our authors. They again use their Six Degrees of Separation technique. See, Milteer’s group had ties to associates of Guy Banister. And remember, Banister was doing work for Marcello. So that takes care of that. After utilizing this technique, the authors then shift into another one of their hundreds of “conditional syndrome” phraseologies:

• Banister likely would have used Milteer in a supporting role for the JFK plot…Milteer himself would have made a logical person to take some of the blame if needed, given his far right credentials and public anti-Kennedy stance. (p. 662)

They go on to write that Milteer could have even been used as a linkage to Vallee in Chicago. (Ibid.) Six Degrees is one handy tool to have at hand.

The main Mafioso they link to Tampa is, of course, Trafficante. They use former Tampa police Chief J. P. Mullins, who has since died, as a source. Apparently, they never talked to Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent Ken Sanz who is alive and an authority on Trafficante. He told the St. Petersburg Times (11/23/05) that he never heard of Trafficante’s involvement in the affair. Even though he has done years of research on Trafficante and is serving as a consultant to a book on the man.

Between the two attempts on JFK, the authors interpolate a chapter on President Kennedy’s speech in Miami on November 18th. They say that part of the address was supposed to be aimed at the C-Day leader as a note of encouragement that the operation was ongoing. Oddly, they do not quote or paraphrase here that part of the speech under discussion. Basically, Kennedy said that Castro and his crowd had made Cuba into a victim of foreign imperialism, meaning the Russians. And that they together were now trying to expand revolution into South America. He then added:

This, and this alone, divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible, without it, everything is possible. Once this barrier is removed, we will be ready…to work with the Cuban people in pursuit of the progressive goals which a few short years ago stirred the…sympathy of many people throughout the hemisphere.

Now, some of the Kennedy people who worked on the speech were Arthur Schlesinger and Dick Goodwin. The authors quote Schlesinger as saying that only Kennedy’s staff had input into the speech. But then, Waldron and Hartmann bring a contradicting author on stage. It is Seymour Hersh and his hatchet job of a book The Dark Side of Camelot. They use this book to say that the CIA and Desmond Fitzgerald had a hand in the paragraph above. They footnote Hersh on this, but they give no page number for the reference. When you find the material in Hersh’s book, you will see that he is not even talking about the same speech. (Hersh, p. 440) He is writing about an address President Kennedy gave in Palm Beach ten days earlier. Hersh’s source is a former investigator for the Church Committee who is quoting a former CIA liaison to the committee. Further, the original source, Seymour Bolton, died in 1985 (Hersh’s book is full of second hand sources quoting deceased acquaintances.) If one studies the work of CIA liaisons with congressional inquiries one understands their purpose is to do one thing: protect the CIA at all costs. In this instance Bolton was trying to sell the Church Committee on the idea that the paragraph was inserted by CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald as a message to Rolando Cubela, a CIA asset in Cuba who the Agency had enlisted to kill Castro. Cubela was not the coup leader. So Ultimate Sacrifice shifts both the speech and the alleged target of the message. So how do they show in this chapter that the speech was a message to the coup leader? Or maybe they were thinking no one would notice these things?

But it’s actually worse than that. If one looks at the passage, does it not sound as if Kennedy is saying that he just wants Castro and Che Guevara to abstain from exporting Marxist revolution into South America? And if this would stop, the USA and Cuba could then establish a dÈtente? And that jibes with what Kennedy was trying to do through his triple back channel of Lisa Howard, William Attwood, and Jean Daniel. (Which, interestingly enough, the authors try to discount in this very chapter on page 670. Probably to make their unsupported scenario more palatable.) If we look at the passage in that way, then Kennedy’s special envoy Attwood can shed some valuable light on the Miami address:

• It was intended to help me by signaling to Castro that normalization was possible if Cuba simply stopped doing the Kremlin’s work in Latin America (such as trying to sabotage — vainly as it turned out — the upcoming Venezuelan elections). (Attwood, The Twilight Struggle, p. 262)

This concept of the speech, that it was an olive branch extended to Castro and not a war overture to Cubela–or whomever Waldron and Hartmann are referring to–is echoed in an article by Daniel published shortly after the assassination entitled “Unofficial Envoy” (The New Republic 12/14/63 ). And his information was from the most primary source of all: JFK himself.

Now, if we are not blinded by the likes of Sy Hersh and Seymour Bolton, we should note Attwood’s mention of the upcoming Venezuelan elections. We should also note the date of the Miami speech, and also the date of the Richard Helms anecdote about the Venezuela arms cache that I mentioned earlier. The speech was on November 18th. Helms went to see Robert Kennedy and the president the next day with his phony story about the arms caches sent by Castro to Venezuela, a country that Attwood says JFK was worried about Cuba interfering in. Doesn’t it seem more likely that Helms and Fitzgerald were trying to force Kennedy into backing up the very words he had delivered the night before? Helms is figuratively telling JFK: “This is what you warned Castro about last night Mr. President. And look, today we discover he is doing just what you warned him not to do. What are you going to do about it? We have to do something. ” Far from sharing this C-Day agenda about Cuba, it would seem to me that the CIA was trying to get inside this overture for dÈtente, in order to take advantage of it and snuff it out just as it got rolling.

And this is a real problem with the book, its handling of the CIA. I never thought I would see a book about the JFK case that would vouch for the honesty of Richard Helms. But this one tries to ( pp. 44-45). About the only guy with less credibility than Helms on the assassination would be David Phillips. But Ultimate Sacrifice tries to rehabilitate Phillips’ words and writings on the JFK case (p. 562). And they even go beyond that. It tries to say that the things he did, he didn’t really do. Why? Because he did them without knowing he was being manipulated by the likes of Banister and the Mob. I’m not kidding:

• By having Oswald use the FPCC and build a very public (and well-documented) pro-Castro cover … Phillips played right into the hands of Banister and others planning JFK’s assassination … (p. 473)

By no means is this the only place they serve as defense attorneys for Phillips. They do it at least four other times (pp. 241, 509, 531, 532). Poor Dave, flying from JM/WAVE, to Mexico City, to Langley. He was so busy he didn’t realize that his street operative Banister was setting him up the whole time. What a fool.

When David Talbot reviewed the book (all too kindly) in Salon, he pointed out this clear aspect of the work: the authors’ defense tract for the Agency. Waldron and Hartmann wrote Talbot to defend themselves:

• … our book exposes Mafia-compromised CIA assets, extensive CIA intelligence failures, unauthorized operations, and the stonewalling of Robert Kennedy and government committees by certain CIA officials — all under the veil of secrecy covering AM/WORLD.

In other words, they issued a non-denial denial. I like that: e.g. Clay Shaw and Ferrie manipulating Oswald in Clinton-Jackson was one of many “CIA intelligence failures”. I like even better the phrase “Mafia-compromised CIA assets”. See, Ferrie and Banister were working with Marcello, not the CIA. And this device is probably the reason that the book barely mentions Shaw, and amazingly, does not mention at all Ruth and Michael Paine. It would have been tough, even for these inventive authors, to make them into “Mafia-compromised” figures in the landscape.

But the problem with the non-denial denial is that the authors cannot deny their book. To list every instance where they try to immunize the CIA would literally take pages. But how’s this for starters:

• Later chapters show how some of those CIA assets were unknowingly manipulated by the Mafia in their plot to assassinate JFK. (p. 51)
• More than anything, the CIA’s decades-long organizational cover up was designed to hide intelligence failures and protect reputations…(p.59)
• Just because certain names have been linked to C-Day…It does not mean that any particular CIA officials were knowingly involved in JFK’s assassination. (p. 62)
• Phillips and the CIA had their own agenda for Oswald, an agenda that had nothing to do with JFK’s assassination. (p. 173)
• Harry Williams told us which one of the C-Day participants he felt was knowingly involved in JFK’s assassination (and it was not someone like E. Howard Hunt or James McCord)…(p. 187)
• The Dallas meeting between Oswald and David Atlee Phillips probably eliminates Phillips from knowingly being involved in JFK’s assassination…(p. 531)

And on and on and on. There must be at least 20 such passages in the book. But the one that takes the cake is this:

• Two months later, when Ms. Odio saw Oswald on TV after JFK’s assassination, she fainted … That was exactly what the Mafia wanted … (p. 164)

When I read that, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or do both and go bipolar. To her everlasting credit, when Sylvia Meagher examined the Odio incident four decades ago, she postulated that it showed a conspiracy between the Cuban exiles, the CIA, and elements of the reactionary right (Accessories After the Fact pgs 384-86). But according to Ultimate Sacrifice, the poor deluded lady was wrong. And we are all lost sheep. Why? Because we either didn’t know or ignored the incredibly powerful fact that Rolando Masferer’s brother lived in Odio’s complex. And Masferer — you guessed it — knew a couple of mobsters. What do the authors leave out? That many Cuban exiles lived in that complex, and that you could have picked out others who had relations to every group that was funding anti-Castro operations.

What I have described with the Odio incident is absolutely systematic throughout the book. Especially in a section called “Three Oswald Riddles”. For instance, the authors write that Oswald did actually order the rifle, but probably at the behest of someone working for the Mafia (p. 460). And somehow Richard Cain would get the info into the media after the fact. (p. 465) The problem with that wild and irresponsibly speculative scenario is that today, due to people like Raymond Gallagher, (Probe Vol. 5 No. 6, p. 10) and especially John Armstrong, we can show that it is highly doubtful that Oswald ever ordered that rifle. In a tour de force performance in his book Harvey and Lee, Armstrong demonstrates, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Oswald could not have ordered the rifle. (pgs 438-487) And he shows that-guess what-the people who manufactured the phony evidence afterwards weren’t mobsters.

This consistent pattern of distorting, smudging, and obfuscating good evidence in favor of amorphous, and sometimes non-existent, Mafia “connections” has one of its highlights in Mexico City. Ignoring all the questions about entrance and exit into the country (see for example my first book Destiny Betrayed p. 264) Ultimate Sacrifice maintains that Oswald really did go to Mexico and onward to Mexico City. (p. 540) Ignoring the problems with the sign-in sheet at the hotel (DiEugenio op. cit. ), they further believe that Oswald stayed in Mexico City. And further, they say it was him at both the Cuban and Soviet consulates. Now to go into all the disputes about what the witnesses who saw him say the person who was there looked like would take several pages (for a decent summary see Tony Summers, Conspiracy pgs 343-352). But the capper for me is that they say he was there actually trying to get to Cuba! (In aid of C-Day of course.) Now many authors have noted the scene he created, what a nuisance he was, how truculent he was in attitude. How him raising his voice caused others to look around and even come out of their cubicles. How he didn’t even seem to know the right protocol to get a visa. How his calls to the Soviet Embassy arrived on the wrong day or during times when the staff was not there. Even Castro commented later that anyone trying to get to Cuba does not do what Oswald did. Again, Waldron and Hartmann either ignore all this or try to explain it away. And the only way to explain this obtuse balderdash in Ultimate Sacrifice is in light of the authors’ previous comments about Phillips. They are trying to get him (and his assistant Ann Goodpasture) off the hook about their manipulation of an Oswald imposter in Mexico City. Further, they wish to disguise how the CIA used the incident to 1.) frame Oswald, and 2.) force President Johnson into a cover up after the fact.

Although I had hints about what Ultimate Sacrifice was up to before this, when I read this section the proverbial light went on in my head. And the light spelled out the name of Robert Blakey. Let me explain the clear parallel. As writers like Gaeton Fonzi and myself have pointed out, Blakey had a problem at the end of the HSCA inquiry. His committee had turned up a lot of evidence showing that the CIA was involved in the conspiracy, and also that the military had covered up that fact with the autopsy. How did Blakey solve that problem? He dismissed most of the investigators and kept a small coterie of trusted associates to write the Final Report and edit the published volumes. In that report, and in the volumes, he did all he could to minimize any CIA involvement and to disguise the true facts of the autopsy. He then stowed away a massive amount of raw evidence, much more than the Warren Commission did.

This worked for awhile. It fell apart when the Assassination Records Review Board began to declassify much of the hidden record. People like Gary Aguilar and David Mantik began to expose how Blakey had hidden what really happened in Bethesda. John Newman and Bill Davy began to delve into the new revelations about Mexico City and New Orleans. I wrote an article with these new documents to indicate what Blakey had done. (See The Assassinations pp. 51-89) In other words, the cat was out of the bag.

What Ultimate Sacrifice tries to do is put the cat back in the bag. It tries to repeat what Blakey did. It says: All this striking, powerful new evidence the ARRB released is not what you think. You say the military deliberately disguised the autopsy and may have forged the x-rays? You’re wrong. Bobby Kennedy controlled the autopsy. You think the Lopez Report on Mexico City says an Oswald imposter was there under the control of David Phillips? Wrong again, its C-Day and Richard Cain. You read Fonzi’s The Last Investigation and think the Odio incident is a more powerful indicator now of CIA and CIA affiliated Cuban exile involvement? Wrong once more, you fool. That’s just what Roselli and the Mafia wanted you to think.

But if we are all fools, that leaves the question Talbot asked: Why would the Mafia kill JFK if they knew he was going into Cuba in a few days? Did they not want back into the island to get their hotels and casinos back? The authors answered this in their letter to him by saying, “…the Kennedys tried to exclude the Mafia from any involvement in the coup plan, and any involvement in Cuba after the coup.” Like almost every aspect of the book, this is preposterous. Concerning the first contention, that the Kennedys excluded the Mob from the plan: Really? You mean RFK didn’t call up Giancana and say, “Hey Sam, we’re going into Cuba on December 1st. Meet me then in Havana at the Tropicana and I’ll sell you your hotels back.” About the latter part, keeping them out of the liberated Cuba: How would it be possible to ensure that the Mafia would be kept off the island? Did the Kennedys plan on occupying every square mile of the place with a 150,000 man army and protecting the long shoreline with a naval armada indefinitely? Would they do background checks on every Cuban on the island and every one coming in to see they had no ties to the Mafia? (This in the days before computers.) Even though two of the alleged coup leaders, Varona and Artime, already had ties to the Mob? But this is the kind of thing one has to swallow to accept this abomination of a book.

One of the most puzzling things about Ultimate Sacrifice is that some have actually taken it seriously. Peter Scott has said it is well documented. My question to Peter: Well-documented with what? Frank Ragano and Ed Partin? If you don’t analyze the footnotes you might be impressed. Unfortunately for my mental health, I did so I’m not impressed. Vince Palamara has gone on Amazon.com to praise the book as one of the best ever written on the case. Vince is supposed to be an authority on the Secret Service. Did he not notice what the authors did with Edwin Black’s seminal essay on Chicago? That people like this, and others, could be bamboozled by a dreadful and pretentious pastiche shows how rudderless the research community has become.

When Gus Russo introduced Lamar Waldron in Dallas many years ago, he clearly meant him to be the fair-haired Luke Skywalker, rescuing the Jedi research community from the hordes of the Galactic Empire. What many didn’t recall, then or later, was that Luke Skywalker’s father turned out to be Darth Vader.

Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann wasted little time in writing a sequel to their first book Ultimate Sacrifice. That long and portentous volume was originally published in November of 2005. Some authors take awhile to fill the tank between new entries in assassination research. But not them. Just three years after their original foray they have now come out with a new volume. This one is called Legacy of Secrecy. And, at 864 pages, it is almost as long as the first book. Taken together, the length of the two volumes begins to approach Vincent Bugliosi territory. Which, of course, is a dubious distinction.

The authors write that the original length of this book was a little more than three hundred pages. The reason the book clocked in much longer was their desire to include the RFK and MLK cases. What is so odd about their attempt to do so is that, in their discussions of those two cases, they do not come close to relating them to what is their main thesis about the JFK case. The reader will recall that this is the concept of C-Day. That is, the so-called plan for a coup in Cuba that was scheduled for December 1, 1963. This was to partly consist of a Cuban exile invasion from the USA organized by the Pentagon and CIA. The plan was to have the so-called “coup leader” —who was acting as a double agent on the island—murder Castro, blame it on the Russians, call a state of emergency, and arrange for a flotilla of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. The Pentagon would wait in the wings in case they were needed. Since the sizeable Russian force remaining in Cuba would hardly take this laying down, they probably were going to be needed. Yet, when David Talbot asked Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara if he was aware of the upcoming invasion, McNamara said he never knew about it. And as I mentioned in that earlier review, neither did the other two Cabinet level officers who not only should have known, but had to have known. Namely Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. A truly fantastic state of affairs to present to the reader. But the authors proceeded anyway. Even presenting meetings at which some officials knew about C-Day and some did not.

Who was the so-called “coup leader” who was going to pull off bloody treason in the new socialist state? In the hardcover edition of the book, he was not actually named. But it was very strongly hinted that he was Che Guevara. For reasons I stated in my review, this was topping an incredible scenario with an incredible choice for a double agent. David Talbot also called them on this point in his review in Salon. So on the way to the soft cover edition, aided by Liz Smith, the name was now revealed to be Juan Almeida. But here’s the problem. For such a daring and bold plan one needed a coup leader the size and stature of Guevara. If for no other reason, to galvanize the Cuban public into turning on their Russian allies. Which would be no easy feat. Almeida had no such outsize stature. And the possibility exists he would have been rolled over by a combination of the Russians plus the Cubans still loyal to Castro. Which, in light of the objective, would have made things even worse than before.

In this new volume, for the first three parts of the book, the authors essentially discuss the JFK case, with the accent on C-Day again. That is up until about page 470. From there until about page 700 they mainly discuss the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy cases. Here’s the problem with their presentation: I could find no credible linkage between the C-Day plotting and the other two cases. And since their argument about the other two cases is remarkably unconvincing, I really do not understand why they included King and RFK. But even the scope of those three epochal cases wasn’t enough for these two radical-and insatiable—revisionists. The authors include a closing section on Watergate. Again, I don’t know why. But I will make a guess later.

Although I have briefly summarized the key concept of Ultimate Sacrifice, I strongly recommend that the reader read the first section of my original review for a more detailed discussion of the concept of C-Day. (That can be read here. ) One of the problems the authors have with their thesis is that writers who have since read these documents e.g. Jeff Morley and William Davy, do not agree with the spin Waldron and Hartmann place on them. (After my review came out, Davy told me, “Jim, those are contingency plans, and they are labeled as such.”) Not even Peter Dale Scott, who had some praise for aspects of the book, buys into them as C-Day.

But perhaps the most devastating response to the book is by the writer who helped launch Lamar Waldron and his C-Day thesis into the research community. In my previous review, I detailed how Waldron was introduced by none other than Gus Russo at the 1993 Dallas ASK Conference. So one would think that the man who introduced the co-writer of the volume would stand beside the book. One would be wrong. Apparently, Russo got a bit perturbed at the authors for taking credit for revealing the documents to the world for the first time. Which they did on page two of the previous volume. Why did he feel like that? Because Russo discussed them in Live By the Sword eight years earlier. (Russo, pgs 176-179)

In fact, in his conversations with Vincent Bugliosi, Russo goes after the C-Day concept with abandon. Russo actually tackles one of Waldron’s prime sources, Harry Williams. Russo questions how Williams could have known about these plans since it is “abundantly clear” that the documents refer to Manuel Artime’s “Central American operation and have nothing to do with a December ‘coup’ or ‘C-Day”‘ as Waldron refers to it.” (Reclaiming History, End Notes, p. 762) In fact, parts of the plans actually refer to Artime’s group, the MRR, in code. And right below this, Artime himself is also mentioned in code. (CIA record of 6/28/63) Waldron tries to counter this by saying that Williams told the authors that Artime was actually serving under him. But where is the documentary proof of this? Because to anyone who knows anything about Artime’s special place in the CIA, it seems ridiculous on its face. This, I believe, is the beginning of a serious questioning of Williams as a source for the authors. It is an issue I will take up later.

Vincent Bugliosi, agreeing with Davy, quotes from parts of the plans to demonstrate their true nature. For instance, the CINCLANT (Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet) OPLANS 312 and 316 were prepared “in case of a revolt in Cuba.” (op. cit. Bugliosi, p. 758, italics added) The plans were prepared by the US Army under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and are entitled “State-Defense Contingency Plans for a Coup in Cuba”. (ibid) The fact that they are labeled State-Defense makes it even more incredible that neither McNamara nor Rusk knew about the upcoming invasion. But in light of the use of the word “contingency” in the title, that fact is made understandable. In other words, it was never a “go” project. In fact, one draft of the plan, under the above Contingency Plan title, was dated October 21, 1963. Just one month before the assassination. So it must have been clear to everyone what the nature of the project really was by the time of Kennedy’s murder. In fact, one of documents even says that no invasion should be contemplated unless there is active aggression by Castro and/or the Soviets “that threaten the peace or security of the Hemisphere.” (Undated Army memo to the President by Sterling Cottrell. Record No. 198-10004-10072) Since I have taken a lot of space in criticizing Reclaiming History, I am glad to give Bugliosi credit for this part of the book. Especially when he is backed up by the likes of William Davy.

Now let’s get back to the late Harry Williams. Williams first surfaced on the JFK case through the work of William Turner and Warren Hinckle (especially the former) in their fine book The Fish is Red. Turner spent hours interviewing Williams for that book because the volume largely focused on American relations with Cuba during the Kennedy years. But when I talked to Turner about Waldron’s thesis he told me that Williams never mentioned anything about the C-Day concept to him in any of their interviews. Further, when Waldron sent him a thank you note with a copy of Ultimate Sacrifice, Turner told me he wanted no thanks for that book. But with Legacy of Secrecy, this situation gets even worse. Because in this installment, Williams now talks about things that are not only not in The Fish is Red, but they are not even in Ultimate Sacrifice. Or at least, I don’t recall them. And some of these belated revelations are so bombastic, I am sure I would have.

For instance, as I said, in the hardcover version of Ultimate Sacrifice Juan Almeida was not mentioned as the “coup leader”. The emphasis was clearly on Che Guevara. But now, the authors write that Williams told them that Cyrus Vance of the Army was fully aware of Almeida’s role. (Legacy of Secrecy, p. 22) Since Vance helped supervise plans that were labeled as “contingency”, one might ask: His role in what? There is an incredible passage on page 287 that is supposed to describe a meeting that RFK had with President Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination. The subject was C-Day. Since, conveniently, only Johnson and RFK were there, the source for this discussion is Harry Williams, allegedly channeling RFK. According to the roundabout sourcing LBJ told RFK he was not continuing with the C-Day plans, but he would continue to fund some of RFK’s favorite Cuban groups. This paragraph is actually not footnoted at all. But since the authors date other interviews that they did with Williams as taking place in 1992, they had to have known this for the first book. But yet it appears here for the first time. As does the following information (p. 296). RFK made sure that the CIA provided for Almeida’s family members after LBJ decided to halt the C-Day plans. (How one can halt a contingency plan remains the authors’ secret.) This bit of information comes from 1992 interviews with Williams. Again, it first surfaces here. Finally, through an unnamed RFK aide, Williams kept in contact with RFK all the way up to 1968-even during the presidential campaign. (p. 621) They even met privately during this hectic campaign time. And when they did, amidst all the swirling campaign pressures and furious updates, the subject of Almeida and his family “always came up”. (The entire paragraph that contains this information has no footnotes.)

But there is one last bit of belated info from Williams that needs to be noted. In Ultimate Sacrifice, I discussed and criticized the authors’ treatment of Oswald in Mexico City. One of the reasons I did so is that the authors seemed to accept the CIA’s story that it was Oswald there the entire time. Well in Legacy of Secrecy they surface a relevant piece of belated information from Williams in that regard. According to Waldron and Hartmann, Harry Williams saw a picture of Oswald entering the Mexico City Cuban Embassy. (p. 234) Somehow, this wasn’t deemed important enough to include in their previous discussion of Oswald in Mexico City in 2005. Even though the discussion then was much more detailed than it is here. How did Williams see this photo? Through an unnamed Cuban exile linked to Artime. The reason he showed the photo to Williams is not mentioned. And worse, the authors apparently never were curious enough to ask that question of Williams. What makes it odd is that very, very few people have ever mentioned any picture of Oswald. Or claimed to have seen it. And when they have, it is described as shot from an angle and behind. So the identification is not really probative. The only person who has ever stated that such a photo definitely did exist was Winston Scott, the Mexico City station chief at the time of Oswald’s visit. Why he, or anyone else inside the CIA’s surveillance operation, would show such a photo to some unnamed Cuban exile escapes me. And why this exile would be allowed to keep such a photo is even more of a mystery. Especially in light of the fact that the CIA, under intense pressure by the investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), could produce no such picture. Which, of course, fed suspicions that Oswald never really entered the Cuban Embassy. But somehow, over lunch or a baseball game, an anonymous exile showed Williams this invaluable photo.

With what the authors have now done to Williams’ credibility, plus the near universality of agreement on the true nature of the C -Day plans, the end should be spelled out for this entire “second invasion” thesis. Because the only other “on the record” source they had for it the first time around was Dean Rusk. Yet Rusk made it clear that he only heard of such a plan after he left office. Which makes me believe that, while in office, the contingency plans were so contingent that they never even made it to the Secretary of State’s desk. And with the collapse of the C-Day scenario, their use of it is now seen as what I argued it was before: a pretext to do a new spin on a Mob did it book.

Let’s return to the frequent and disturbing use of unnamed sources in the book. This kind of sourcing for crucial and controversial pieces of evidence is something that recurs throughout Legacy of Secrecy. For instance, the authors just happened to have an unnamed Naval Intelligence source who was monitoring Oswald. And guess what? This anonymous source also saw this photo of Oswald in Mexico City! (ibid) So, by accident, Waldron and Hartmann have found almost as many people who have seen this photo as are mentioned in the entire Lopez Report. How do the authors know that it was the Mafia that killed JFK? Well an unnamed top Kennedy aide revealed to them “the leading roles of Marcello, Trafficante, and Roselli in JFK’s murder”. And guess what? This top Kennedy aide knew all about C-Day. Must be nice to have sources like that.

But its even better to have one like the following. Every serious commentator on the JFK autopsy (e.g. Gary Aguilar, David Mantik) has noted the overwhelming evidence that the military controlled that medical procedure and not the Kennedys. (I have used many of these sources in Reclaiming Parkland) These sources extend to the autopsists themselves, and even to Commander Galloway of the Bethesda Medical Center. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) both did extensive investigations about what happened that night. Every significant witness was talked to at least once. And many were talked to twice. In fact, there is a road map to follow in this regard. The FBI agents on hand, Jim Sibert, and Frank O’Neill, had a list of those people present. But apparently, they missed someone. Because the authors have yet another crucial unnamed source who says he was at the autopsy. And, you guessed it, this guy also knew about C-Day. And contrary to dozens of other witnesses, including the autopsists themselves, this mysterious source—who escaped the HSCA and ARRB dragnet—knew that RFK had full knowledge of what happened that night. And further, that RFK probably even directed the autopsy. (p. 184) Hmm. Then why did Bobby Kennedy sign a document that granted “no restrictions” during the procedure? Why did Galloway testify that there were no instructions coming into the autopsy room from the Kennedy suite above? Why did Pierre Finck testify that it was the military that interfered with the autopsy during his famous appearance at the trial of Clay Shaw? But most importantly, in regard to the value of Legacy of Secrecy, why do the authors not mention any of the above proven and pertinent facts? Maybe because it brings into question the information rendered by their unnamed source?

But the prolific use of unnamed sources for crucial information does not end with the JFK case. It also figures importantly in this volume for the King case. According to the authors, prior to the King assassination, a man named Hugh Spake collected money used in the King plot from workers at an Atlanta auto plant. And further, the authors posit that James Earl Ray called Spake the morning of the assassination. (pgs. 496-498) What is the basis for these rather dramatic revelations? Well if one turns to page 814 in the footnotes, the following sourcing appears: ” … from confidential interviews conducted from early 1976 (when author Lamar Waldron was briefly employed at the Lakewood General Motors Auto Plant) to 2007.” This does not inspire confidence. Especially in light of the fact that Spake passed away three years ago. Therefore I don’t understand the need to shield these sources after the subject is dead. Further, the southern rightwing racist groups the authors say he was associated with have gone into eclipse. Secondly, the author never explains why he was doing an investigation of the King case 34 years ago. I know Waldron says he has been studying the JFK case for a long time. But the King case?

In addition to the ready use of unnamed sources, there is an all too frequent use of unreferenced information in general. It is almost as bad here as it was with Joan Mellen’s A Farewell to Justice. The authors have always been desperate to bring Carlos Marcello into the nexus of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. So here they say that some recently declassified files relating to Cuban operations reveal that a certain unnamed case officer was a liaison between the CIA and Marcello. (p. 102) The entire paragraph in which this is revealed lacks footnotes. A few pages later (p. 106), we are informed that three unconfirmed reports place Roselli in Dallas on 11/22/63. This information is also not footnoted. But since the sources they do use also say that a woman drove Roselli and a Miami sharpshooter to the grassy knoll at the far end of Dealey Plaza, we can imagine what the unconfirmed reports are like. In mentioning CIA officer John Whitten and his investigation of Mexico City, the authors write that Richard Helms “knew that Oswald was also linked to his unauthorized Castro assassination operations … ” This is an extremely puzzling statement. This information does not appear in the Inspector General report on the subject. It also does not appear in the Church Committee volumes. To my knowledge, neither Helms nor the CIA has ever uttered a word to this effect. So from where did the authors garner this? Its almost like they are indulging in posthumous mindreading. (As we shall see, they do this with Helms in another instance.)

It gets worse. According to Legacy of Secrecy, LBJ learned about the C-Day plans in the aftermath of the assassination from Hoover and CIA Director John McCone. (pgs. 171-172) Again, this goes unsourced. And it does not appear in the declassified phone transcripts made available by the ARRB. According to even more secret sources, Naval Intelligence began to shred files from its “tight surveillance” on Oswald on the afternoon of November 24, 1963. ONI also did their own secret investigation of the JFK murder. The authors’ anonymous source actually saw the summary report and its “hundreds of supporting documents”. (p. 247) And another anonymous source, independently vouched for this report. (ibid) Finally in this unfootnoted, anonymous sourcing field, the authors state that RFK knew about David Ferrie’s relationship to Carlos Marcello back in 1963, maybe even earlier (p. 403). Again, this is strange. Not even Jim Garrison knew about this in 1963. And as everyone knows, when Garrison passed the Ferrie lead onto the FBI, they at first dropped it. And they then covered it up for the Warren Commission. But RFK knew about it before all this. But the prize in this regard goes to a paragraph on page 404. This paragraph deals with New Orleans matters. Mainly an alleged connection between Marcello and Dean Andrews, plus Clay Shaw’s ties to the CIA. The attached footnote to this information reads as follows:

1994.05.09.10:43:33:16005 (p. 810, footnote 19).

That’s right. Just a line of numbers related to nothing. And no one noticed this pre-publication. Maybe because they didn’t care?

The continual use of this unscholarly practice—I could have named a dozen other similar instances—is a grievous shortcoming. Especially in a book that is attempting to revise the historical record on a serious subject. It indicates that, unlike with John Newman’s JFK and Vietnam, the writers do not have the factual data to fulfill their new paradigm. Probably because the paradigm doesn’t exist.

Another sure sign of this lack of a factual basis is their recurrent use of the assumptive mode. When they need something to happen, they just assume it did. As I demonstrated in my earlier review, one of their aims is to shift the cause of the JFK cover-up. It did not occur because Oswald was some kind of intelligence operative. Oh, no. The main reason was fear of exposing C-Day. Now, since Hoover was the mainspring of the cover up, the authors must write that, “over the coming days, Hoover would no doubt learn more about the … coup plan … ” (p. 171) They offer no evidence for this and no source I have ever read on Hoover refers to it. After JFK is assassinated Santo Trafficante is carefree and smiling. Why? Because “Trafficante knew Jack Ruby, and he apparently felt confident that Ruby would be able to take care of silencing Oswald.” (p. 180) Yet I could find no evidence in the book to certify Trafficante’s arrangement with Ruby in advance. Why is the tape of the Hoover/LBJ call on November 23rd, at 10:01 AM missing? According to the authors, “one possibility” is that if LBJ had been briefed on C-Day he could have mentioned it in passing to Hoover on this call. (p. 225) Even though, as I said earlier, there is no evidence that Hoover-or LBJ for that matter-ever knew about C-Day. And certainly nothing would indicate that these plans caused the FBI or Warren Commission cover-up. When RFK met with Helms after the 1967 Jack Anderson story first publicly exposed the CIA-Mafia plots, they “probably discussed” not just that subject, but the 1963 C-Day plan and “the current status of Almeida and his family.” (p. 419) Even though there is no mention of C-Day in the CIA’s Inspector General Report on those plots.

The most objectionable part of this whole fatuous C-Day cover-up story is that it detracts from the real cause of the cover-up. As demonstrated by writers like John Newman and John Armstrong, that would be the fabricated Mexico City tapes that were sent to Washington and Dallas the evening of the assassination. And which were then made to disappear. Why? Because the voice on the tapes was not Oswald’s. And that would have exposed the whole charade in Mexico City. And as both Newman and the Lopez Report reveal, the three main culprits in that pre-planned charade were James Angleton, David Phillips, and Anne Goodpasture. Which completely vitiates what the authors write at the end of Chapter 17. Namely, that no evidence exists implicating any CIA official above David Morales in the JFK murder.

They also write that there is no confession to indicate any CIA officer’s participation besides Morales’ either. They neatly avoid David Phillips’ teary-eyed, deathbed confession about being in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Which he himself made to his own brother. (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2003 edition, p. 272) And, if you can believe it, in the entire volume there is not one mention of Richard Case Nagell. In fact, I don’t recall his name being in Ultimate Sacrifice either. So in 1,700 pages of writing about the JFK assassination Waldron and Hartmann choose to profusely quote liars like Frank Ragano and Ed Partin. But they couldn’t find the space to mention the man who Jim Garrison called, “the most important witness there is”.

Which brings us to their discussion of Jim Garrison, who was largely avoided in Ultimate Sacrifice. Although they mention aspects of Garrison’s inquiry earlier, the main part of this discussion leads off at Chapter 29. Their first page makes for an interesting intro. They try to disarm the reader by saying they have reviewed all the “books, articles, and documents” about the DA and have come to the conclusion that he “emerges as neither devil nor saint”. (p. 373) The implication being that after a long and painstaking review, Waldron and Hartmann are going to be fair-minded and objective about a controversial subject. As we shall see, that doesn’t happen. They also add that they will focus on things not talked about previously that reveal the Garrison investigation in a new light. Again, that is not done. With the agenda the authors have, how could it?

I should note, the Garrison inquiry is mentioned prior to this chapter and its earlier treatment foreshadows what will come. For instance, the authors try to explain David Ferrie’s trip to Texas on the day and night of the assassination as an attempt to retrieve his library card from Oswald. (p. 177) This is odd. It is true that Ferrie was asking for that card from Oswald’s former landlady in New Orleans. But as Dick Russell notes in On the Trail of the JFK Assassins Ferrie told his friend Ray Broshears that he was waiting for a phone call at the skating rink concerning flying participants in the plot out of Texas. (Russell, p. 107) Secondly, wouldn’t it be kind of stupid for Ferrie to look for that card in Dallas? I mean, was he going to go to Ruth Paine’s house and ask her if the police found it yet? Or walk into the Dallas jail and ask Chief Curry if he could have his card back? With those greased eyebrows and that mohair wig?

A second instance prior to Chapter 29 indicates the quality of their scholarship on the Garrison inquiry. They say that in 1964 Garrison called Robert Kennedy to talk to him about some of his ideas on the JFK case. But RFK hung up on him after some desultory conversation. (p. 254) The source for this piece of nonsense? None other than trashy biographer C. David Heymann. The authors never realize that Garrison could not have any theories to discuss with RFK at the time of this call because he was not investigating the JFK case in 1964. As I thoroughly demonstrated in my review of the book Regicide, Heymann cannot be trusted on anything concerning the JFK case. As is likely here, he has been shown to manufacture interviews. (This reliance on untrustworthy writers is another problem with the book that I will address later.)

What is the “new light” that Waldron and Hartmann shed on the Garrison investigation? Well they hint at it early on, before they even discuss Garrison in a systematic way. They say that the FBI backed off the investigation of David Ferrie and Guy Banister not because of their ties to Oswald and Clay Shaw. But because of their links to Marcello. This is bizarre since no one knew about any Banister-Marcello tie until 15 years later. And it wasn’t what the authors present it as anyway. As I pointed out in my review of Ultimate Sacrifice, the HSCA stated that Ferrie got Banister some investigative work through Wray Gill, one of Marcello’s lawyers. And Waldron and Hartmann shorthanded this into a Banister-Marcello connection. They continue this eccentric characterization here. Yet, as anyone knows who has studied what Garrison called the “Banister Menagerie”, Banister did not do investigative work. This was just a front for his Cuban exile/CIA missions and other intelligence work he did e.g. planting infiltrators into college campuses. The people around his office who actually did investigative work were hangers-on like Jack Martin and Bill Nitschke. By this kind of logic, Martin and Nitschke were tied into the Mafia.

Why is it important to note this bizarre interpretation? Because when all is said and done, the “new light” the authors shed on the Garrison inquiry is really a hoary and disproven platitude. By about the middle of Chapter 37 Waldron and Hartmann are merely echoing the likes of their trusted authorities like John Davis, Dan Moldea, and David Scheim. They say that by 1968 Garrison’s inquiry and his pursuit of Clay Shaw became a “grotesque sideshow” (p. 466). Why? Because it was a diversion away from the true perpetrators of the crime. Who of course were Marcello, Trafficante and Roselli. (pgs. 405, 421, 465) The origins of this discredited concept actually goes back almost forty years. To the infamous Life magazine hatchet job penned by FBI toady Sandy Smith. (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 162)

One of the strongest indicators of their faulty scholarship about Garrison is their use of some questions that allegedly the New York Times sent to the DA. (p. 370) They say they found a copy of these questions in Garrisons’ files. One of the questions was about Ferrie’s rumored, at that time, association with Marcello. The questions were dated November 21, 1966. What the authors do with these questions and Garrison’s famous airplane trip with Senator Russell Long has to be detailed to understand their agenda on the subject. They actually try and say that because Long allegedly had ties to Marcello, and because Long’s trip with Garrison came after the date of the questions, therefore Long convinced Garrison not to go after Marcello. (ibid) This is fevered John Davis propaganda of a virulent strain. And they have nothing of substance to back it except the NY Times questions. And they then cheat on this. How? By moving the Long/Garrison plane ride back to December of 1966. This way Garrison’s discussion with Long about the JFK case comes after the alleged letter from the Times. But there is a big problem with it all. They are wrong about the date of the trip. The function that Garrison attended in New York occurred on November 13, 1966. In other words, it was before the date of the letter. (Davy, p. 57) But this is silliness anyway. Garrison had briefly investigated Ferrie back in 1963. And there are indications that he had intermittently started back onto the JFK case prior to the Long conversation. But his primary focus at these early points was on Oswald. And in 1966 and early 1967 it was on Oswald’s connections as an agent provocateur being run by Banister. Which Marcello had nothing to do with.

What the authors do with Garrison and Bernardo DeTorres is even worse. De Torres is an incredibly intriguing personage who the HSCA showed a strong interest in. In fact, he was actually questioned in Executive Session. Gaeton Fonzi writes about DeTorres in his fine book, The Last Investigation. Except he conceals his name by calling him by the pseudonym “Carlos”. DeTorres had been a military coordinator for the Brigade 2506 part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. (Davy, p. 148) He was strongly suspected of being in Dallas on 11/22/63. And even of having pictures of Kennedy being killed in Dealey Plaza. He had been offered a large sum of money for the photos by Life magazine. (See Probe Vol. 3 No. 6) Further, DeTorres claimed to know that Oswald was not involved in the assassination since he knew who actually was involved. And he knew this because “they were talking about it before it even happened.” (Fonzi, p. 239) Later on, DeTorres worked with legendary CIA arms specialist Mitch Werbell, who some suspect of being involved in designing the weaponry used in Dealey Plaza. (See Spooks, by Jim Hougan, pgs 35-36)

What few people knew prior to the ARRB process is that DeTorres first surfaced as a suspect during the Garrison investigation. He was one of the very early infiltrators sent in by the CIA. Allegedly recommended to the DA by a policeman, he told Garrison that he had important information about the murder. He also used Miami DA Richard Gerstein as a reference. (Davy, ibid) Since he was from Miami, Garrison gave him the assignment of questioning Eladio Del Valle, Ferrie’s colleague who Cuban G-2 strongly suspected of being part of the JFK plot. Not very long after DeTorres was sent to question him, Del Valle’s mutilated corpse was found near the front stairs of DeTorres’ Miami apartment. (ibid) This was at the same time that Ferrie was mysteriously found dead in his apartment. The HSCA later developed evidence that DeTorres was filing reports on Garrison for the Miami CIA station JM/WAVE as he was serving as a double agent in his office. By the time he worked with Werbell, the Cuban exile community knew that Bernardo was the man to see if you had a problem. Why? Because he had “contacts on a high level with the CIA in Washington D.C.” (ibid)

All of this is absolutely riveting information. And it was not readily available until the time of the ARRB. The backward light it shines on Garrison is nearly blinding. Why? One reason is that Clay Shaw defenders sometimes say that the CIA was “monitoring” Garrison because he was accusing them in the press of being involved in the JFK conspiracy. But the DeTorres penetration occurred before the Garrison inquiry was even made public. And it also occurred before the DA had decided on the CIA as his prime suspect. So before Garrison made any public comments about the CIA, a highly connected Agency plant was sent in and was filing reports with JM/WAVE. And further, DeTorres may have been involved in the setting up of Del Valle because of his association with Ferrie. And it should be noted here that Richard Case Nagell was on the trail of both Ferrie and Del Valle in the spring of 1963 (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2003 edition, p. 182). Which, of course, is months before the assassination.

What Waldron and Hartmann do with all this remarkable information about DeTorres is kind of shocking. (pgs 387-88) They do refer to him as a spy in Garrison’s camp. But they never mention him by name! Then, differing with Garrison authority Bill Davy, they say he was recommended to the DA not by the police, but by another Cuban. And finally Del Valle, “Garrison’s [unnamed] investigator”, and Rolando Masferer (What?) all had ties to Santo Trafficante. So the implication is that the Florida Don had Del Valle killed. Why? Because if he was linked to the JFK assassination, his empire would collapse. That’s what they write. (p. 387) How he would be linked to the Kennedy assassination at this point in time is never explained. In fact, I don’t think we are supposed to ask. But by concealing DeTorres’ name, his background, his ties to JM/WAVE, and the circumstances of Del Valle’s murder, it reverses the logical deduction of what happened to Del Valle. In other words, the censorship and tortured logic conceals a CIA operation and deliberately disguises it as Mafia oriented. The exposure of the above information about DeTorres proves this could not have been by accident. So does their concealment of his name. They didn’t want you to know his name because then you would find out how tied in with the CIA he was. It’s the same thing they did with Edwin Black’s work on the Chicago plot. And as before, this had to have been done by design. ( I will return to Black’s work later.)

Predictably, the flip side of the coin is also manifest here. If the deluded DA was being led astray, his attacker Walter Sheridan was on the right track. Because, of course, Sheridan suspected the Mafia, especially Carlos Marcello. (p. 465) A lot of their material about Sheridan and Garrison is drawn from David Talbot’s book Brothers. In my review of that volume I minutely examined why Talbot was wrong about his depiction of what Sheridan was doing in New Orleans for NBC, and why he was doing it. The idea that Sheridan strongly suspected that Marcello was behind the JFK killing was brought into question by a conversation that Irving Davidson had on the day the HSCA report was issued. Lobbyist Davidson was a lifelong friend of Marcello’s who also knew Sheridan. And Sheridan, who is sourced in those HSCA volumes, told Davidson that the HSCA report was a piece of crap. (Bugliosi, op. cit., p. 1175) As I said in my review of Brothers, the question now becomes: What did Sheridan actually believe about the JFK case? And further: Was he deliberately leading the HSCA astray? This is a question that Talbot sidestepped. And so do the present authors.

As in the first book, the authors make some truly unbelievable statements that are almost perverse in their logic and sense. For instance, they write that if the idea behind the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, the conspirators would have kept Oswald alive longer so he would have been the focus of an outcry against Fidel. (p. 239) In reality, the longer Oswald was kept alive, the higher the risk was that he would betray who he really was to the authorities. In fact, this risk was seriously broached while he was being held. First, through his attempted call to Raleigh, North Carolina, and second, when the FBI listened to the Mexico City tapes and discovered the voice on them was not Oswald’s. And at this point, Oswald did not even have a lawyer. So the longer he was held, the higher the risk he would declare himself an undercover agent.

Why did suspicion fall upon Oswald after the assassination? Legacy of Secrecy poses a novel approach to that mystery. Waldron and Hartmann posit that it was due to Oswald’s friendly relations with minority employees. This created suspicion about him in the aftermath of the crime. (p.121) Of course, they present no evidence for this rather strange and revolutionary theory.

The Tom Tilson story about a man escaping down the railway embankment behind the grassy knoll has been discredited for many years (p. 116), most notably by Canadian author Peter Whitmey. But it gets trotted out here again. And in fact, it gets embellished. They say the man running to a car and throwing something in the back resembled Jack Ruby.

The interpretation that Waldron and Hartmann put on the alleged attempt by Oswald to shoot General Edwin Walker is startling-even for them. It begins with an incredible report that Oswald was in a New Orleans jail around April 1, 1963. (p. 263) Yet, he had not moved there yet. The authors insinuate that this was somehow part of the congressional investigations into the ordering of weapons through the mail. They then imply that somehow the Walker shooting was manipulated by Walker and his allies to divert attention away from themselves and also people like Marcello, Banister and Joseph Milteer. (p. 265) Conveniently left out of how the Walker tale was manipulated are two key elements. The first is Ruth Paine. She produced the note about the escapade allegedly left by Oswald, which had no fingerprints on it. This was turned over to the police on November 30, 1963. So even though the police had searched the Paine residence twice, they did not find it. It was this note that first caused the FBI to look at Oswald as a suspect in the Walker shooting. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 512) Second, it was this note which caused the FBI to switch both the caliber and the color of the bullet the Dallas Police retrieved from the Walker residence to match the ammunition of the Mannlicher Carcano. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 49) Incredibly, the authors do not even mention Ruth Paine’s role in this charade and they minimize what the FBI did to transform the bullet. Even though McKnight shows that the FBI knew they were participating in a deception. (ibid pgs 49-50)

In this regard I must note that the authors pay me a backhanded compliment in this book. My review of Ultimate Sacrifice was fairly coruscating and it received some notoriety within the research community. Waldron and Hartmann clearly read it and took it seriously because they try and counteract several of my criticisms. One of the most serious ones was my relating of an anecdote in Richard Helms’ autobiography entitled A Look Over my Shoulder. On November 19, 1963 Helms visited Robert Kennedy’s office and told him that Castro was shipping a large amount of arms into Venezuela in order to upset their upcoming elections. (Helms, pgs 226-27). Helms has RFK saying nothing. He looks at the evidence the CIA took in—a foreign made submachine gun allegedly retrieved from an arms cache-and told Helms to go see President Kennedy. Helms and his assistant do so and JFK asked a couple of questions about how that large a shipment of weapons got through. They then left and later that day, Helms asked Kennedy’s assistant, Ken O’Donnell, for a picture.

Now, in my original critique I posed the question that if C-Day was coming up in 12 days, and if all the principals involved in this episode were knowledgeable about it i.e. RFK, JFK and Helms, why would the CIA Director of Plans even bother to see the Kennedys if he knew we were invading Cuba shortly? This story shot a harpoon into the guts of their whole C-Day scenario. Because the authors maintained that even though McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy did not know about C-Day, Helms did. And it would be impossible for all four not to know. But this story, in Helms’ own book, indicates he did not. When they relate this tale in Legacy of Secrecy (p. 36), they leave out the capper. In his book, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (p. 383), CIA analyst Joseph B. Smith mentions this specific arms seizure. And from the reports on it, he deduced that the CIA planted the weapons. So if Helms knew about C-Day, why did he go to the trouble of planting those weapons if he knew we were invading Cuba anyway?

This is their hapless reply to that question: Helms was testing JFK to see if he was getting cold feet about the invasion. But the problem is there is not any indication of this in Helms’ book. On anyone’s behalf. But further, the authors now contradict themselves in another important way to give their phony spin a pretext in reality. In their first book, they characterized JFK’s back channel to Castro through people like Lisa Howard, Jean Daniel, and William Attwood as going nowhere. In my review, I showed this was false. There was progress being made and JFK was very interested in that progress continuing. I postulated that what Helms was actually trying to do with the planted arms cache was to scuttle those talks since he knew that JFK did not want Cuba interfering in Venezuela’s elections. Now, sit down before you read the next sentence. Waldron and Hartmann have stolen my explanation and try and make it work for them! Now they say that Helms was doing all this to ensure the invasion against the back channel’s imminent success. Without noting that in their previous volume they said there would be no point in doing such a thing since the talks were useless.

To me, the rearranging of facts, recasting of events, and posthumous mindreading into Helms’ psyche, all this is not scholarship. Plain and simple, it is CYA.

Another instance where they try and counteract my critique is in regards to their alleged “confession” from Santo Trafficante about his role in the JFK assassination. Using Tony Summers’ work (Vanity Fair, 12/94), I showed that the originator of this tall tale, Mafia lawyer Frank Ragano, was almost surely lying. Why? Because Ragano placed Trafficante in Tampa on the day of his phony confession. He could not have been there since 1.) He was undergoing dialysis treatments and was using a colostomy bag, 2.) Summers interviewed two witnesses who placed him in Miami on the day, 3/13/87, he made the ersatz confession in Tampa. 3.) His doctor in Tampa did not see him on the day in question, and 4.) His relatives said he had not been to Tampa in months. In the face of all this, the authors still vouch for Ragano’s veracity. (p. 757) But they do not tell the reader about the colostomy bag, which would make the 280 mile drive or flight to Tampa ludicrous. And they leave out the two witnesses who placed him in Miami, and the fact he did not see his doctor while in Tampa.

A third effect of my review is that now the authors properly source Edwin Black’s groundbreaking work on the attempt to kill President Kennedy in Chicago. If one recalls, in Ultimate Sacrifice they tried to disguise the proper source of this essay by footnoting that magazine article to a book by one George Black. A book that did not even discuss JFK’s assassination. Here, they properly source it but incredibly, they never even note how they failed to do so in the first book. They then indirectly confirm my worst fears about why they did not. On page 787, in the Acknowledgments, they write the following sentence: “The work of the following people was useful in our research, even though at times we may differ with some in our conclusions”. The first name listed of people they disagree with in conclusions is Edwin Black’s. In other words, they didn’t like what Black did with the Chicago plot. So they apparently wanted no one to find his work since it would contradict their own. With no thanks to Waldron and Hartmann, you can read Black’s essay here.

What can one say about this kind of scholarship and honesty? Except that in each instance I mention, the evidence indicates that the authors knew about the information that I used. They chose to ignore it. And in the case of Black, they tried to bury it.

One of the reasons they desperately hang on to the Ragano/Trafficante fantasy is because they want to ballyhoo this “confessional” motif as evidence that they were right about the actual JFK culprits in Ultimate Sacrifice. That is, the Mafia killed JFK. So they hang on to the specious Ragano declaration because they need it for the Trafficante part of their confessionals. Even though it almost certainly did not happen.

They also use “confessions” by John Martino and David Morales. These are also dubious. In the case of Morales (p. 97), how can you call what he said a “confession”? After raging against what JFK did at the Bay of Pigs, he then said “Well, we took care of that son of a bitch didn’t we.” (Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, p. 390) As John Simkin, among others, has commented, this can be fairly interpreted as being nothing but cheap braggadocio. Going further than that, I would be willing to wager that you could have heard dozens of remarks by both the Cuban exiles and CIA operators about JFK down through the years. Does that mean they were all involved in his assassination? But further, Morales was a CIA man all the way. So how does this prove their Mob-did-it thesis?

In my review of Larry Hancock’s Someone Would Have Talked, I commented on the case of John Martino. The information Martino allegedly conveyed through friends and relatives—which is hard to keep track of since, 35 years later, it keeps on growing—does not connote Martino being part of a plot. To quote myself in my critique of that book, “As summarized above, the information Martino had could have been communicated to him through several of his Cuban exile friends. None of it connotes Martino being part of the plot. And Hancock advances no affirmative evidence to prove that point.” And as I noted in that review, the other person Hancock uses, Richard Case Nagell, is a much more valuable witness than Martino. For me, and in practical terms, Nagell is worth ten times what Martino is worth.

Another “confession” Waldron and Hartmann use is allegedly by John Roselli. This one they source to Richard Mahoney’s book Sons and Brothers. This is the sum and substance of the “Roselli confession” as it appears on page 229 of that book: “Washington attorney Tom Wadden, a longtime friend and attorney of Roselli’s, subsequently confirmed Roselli’s role in plotting to kill the president.” One natural question in response to this single sentence is: What plotting was he talking about? What exactly did Roselli do? Because if there are no details, there is no confession. But it’s actually worse than that. Because Mahoney never even interviewed Wadden. He got this from Bill Hundley, a former Justice Department lawyer under RFK. Wadden is mentioned exactly one other time in Mahoney’s book. That is on page 333 along with a group of other Mafia attorneys like Jack Wasserman. Before I read about this “startling confession” I wondered why I did not recall any other author sourcing it in the ten years since the Mahoney book had been published. Now I know.

Obviously, in light of the above, the authors were getting desperate to come up with something of substance. So early on in the book, they foreshadow what will be their “crown jewel” in this regard. (pgs 46-51) That is a confession by Carlos Marcello. They refer to this as the “CAMTEX documents” since Carlos Marcello was in a Texas prison when they originated. And they mischaracterize them at the start. They say that these documents were discovered at the National Archives in 2006 (p. 47) The implication being that no one ever saw them before. Which is false. Ace Archives researcher Peter Vea sent them to me in 1997. Which is ten years before Waldron and Hartmann found them. They also write that the contents are being published in Legacy of Secrecy for the first time. (p. 46) Again, this is misleading. Vincent Bugliosi referred to them in Reclaiming History. (See the End Notes file, pgs. 658-659)

Both of the above shed light on why no one used them before. When Peter sent me the documents, he titled his background work on them as “The Crazy Last Days of Carlos Marcello.” Peter had done some work on Marcello’s health while he was incarcerated. And between that, and the reports that came out at the time of his 1993 death, he and I concluded that at the time of the CAMTEX documents Marcello was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Today, the accepted gestation period for the disease is about seven years. There is little doubt that by 1988-89 Marcello’s Alzheimer’s was in full and raging bloom. And at this time period, Marcello’s general health was beginning to collapse through a series of strokes. Now, the time period of Marcello’s talks with the jailhouse informant who is one of the sources for the CAMTEX documents begins in 1985. So if you do the arithmetic you will see that Marcello’s Alzheimer’s was very likely well along by then. And later on, when told about the jailhouse informant’s accusation that he had Kennedy killed, Marcello replied that this was “crazy talk”. (Bugliosi op cit p. 658)

And in fact it is. The CAMTEX documents actually have Marcello meeting with Oswald in person and in public at his brother’s restaurant. (p. 50) But that’s nothing. According to CAMTEX, Marcello set up Ruby’s bar business and Ruby would come to Marcello’s estate to report to him! And so after being seen in public with both the main participants, he has the first one kill Kennedy and the second kill Oswald. But yet, the authors are so intent on getting the CAMTEX documents out there that they don’t note that these contradict their own conclusion written elsewhere in the same book. Namely that Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy. (p. 121)

This is already too lengthy to go into any long discussion of the parts of the book devoted to the King case, the RFK case, and Watergate. But, in my view, these are even worse than the JFK section of the book. Which is saying something. For instance, they conclude that James Earl Ray killed King. Without telling the reader that the rifle he allegedly used needed to be properly calibrated by machine. And it wasn’t. Who put Ray up to it? Well it was Joseph Milteer, with the help of Carlos Marcello. (Talk about the Odd Couple.) What’s the evidence for this? Almost all of it is the unnamed sources I noted above. ( In fact, Chapter 52 about Milteer and Spake meeting Ray in Atlanta comes off as near self-parody.)

And what these two do with Grace and Charlie Stephens is simply appalling. They actually smear her and try and rehabilitate him! This is the woman who, when the authorities went to her to get an ID on Ray, refused to sign the papers because the man she saw in the boarding house the day of the murder was smaller and older. She still refused when they offered her a 100,000 dollar reward. Even though she was poor. When they took the same deal to her husband Charles, he readily made the identification. Even though he was falling down drunk at the time of the shooting. When he tried to collect on the money, the offer was withdrawn. He sued and his efforts failed. So this drunk became the witness that got Ray extradited back for his phony trial. Just so his lawyer Percy Foreman could sell him down the river.

And what happened to Grace? She got stashed away in a mental institution for ten years. When Mark Lane finally found her there he asked her if he could talk to her about the King case. She agreed. But she told him she was not going to lie about the man she saw at the boarding house. Lane said that was fine. He just wanted her to tell the truth. She did, and the man she saw was not Ray.

Attempting to rehab Charlie Stephens is like rehabbing Howard Brennan in the JFK case. (All this information on the Stephens matter is reported in Code Name Zorro by Lane and Dick Gregory.) Further, if you can believe it-which you probably can by now-they ignore all the new material generated on the MLK case in the nineties. That is during the attempt by Judge Joe Brown to get the case retried at the time. But yet this is the newest material generated on that case. But it doesn’t fit their agenda. So they ignore it.

They also strongly imply that Sirhan shot RFK (p. 686). Yep, hypnotized himself into doing it at the request of the Mafia. (p. 666) And that night at the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan had those drinks to steel himself to kill RFK. (p. 629) See, Sirhan was a compulsive gambler who was losing hundreds of dollars. (p. 626) And … you get the drift by now, don’t you? Incredibly, in the entire section on the RFK case there is not one mention of either MK/Ultra or William J. Bryan. And Bryan is the man who most suspect of programming Sirhan. In fact, there is much evidence to show this is the case. Further, they say it was not Thane Cesar who shot RFK. (p. 641) Even though he was the only person in perfect position to deliver the fatal shot. In fact, any of the RFK shots. Shane O’Sullivan disconnected Michael Wayne from Khaiber Khan in Who Killed Bobby? to minimize that conspiracy angle. Waldron and Hartmann do the opposite: they discount Khan and do not even mention Michael Wayne. (pgs. 660)

What was the reason for the RFK cover-up? According to them one of the reasons was whether or not drug trafficking played a role in the case. (Read it yourself on p. 680) See, the LAPD acted then and now “not as part of a massive orchestrated cover-up, but to avoid embarrassment and scandal for the department.” (p. 686) If you read Lisa Pease’s review of An Open and Shut Case you will see that what caused the cover-up. It was the probable 14 shots fired that night when Sirhan’s weapon could only fire eight. Further, the acoustics tape indicates the shots came from two directions and therefore from at least two assassins. And Sirhan was not one of the assailants of RFK. Because if he was, they would not have had to substitute the bullet evidence at the Wenke Panel hearings. Which is what the evidence indicates happened. Incredibly, the book does not even mention those proceedings supervised by Judge Wenke. Which would be like discussing the JFK case and never mentioning the HSCA. Further, and perhaps even more shocking, the work done on the newly discovered audio tape of the shooting by sound technician Phil Von Pragg is also never discussed. Even though the cable TV special based on this key discovery was broadcast a year before the book came out.

And how do the authors support the nonsense they write about these two cases? By using authors like Gerald Posner in the King case and Dan Moldea in the RFK case.

Their section on Watergate is just as outlandish. They say that the whole motivation behind the two year scandal was Nixon’s attempt to get the Inspector General’s Report on the CIA-Mafia plots. When that seems like thin gruel (because Nixon is not in the report), they shift over to the Inspector General’s Report on the Bay of Pigs operation. (pgs 716-17) The point of all this thrashing about? The usual. The arrests at the Watergate were not engineered by Helms and the CIA. (p. 720) Even though, as Jim Hougan has proven in Secret Agenda, CIA agents James McCord and Howard Hunt deliberately sabotaged the break-in that night. And there are two sources-one through Hougan and one through Washington lawyer Dan Alcorn— that say Helms was alerted to the arrests as they happened.

I don’t want to leave the impression that the book is utterly worthless. It’s not quite that horrendous. There are some good tidbits in it. For instance, a CIA agent actually reviewed Edward Epstein’s book Inquest when it was published. And this became the model for the famous “Countering the Critics” CIA memorandum prepared for Helms. (p. 380) There is a good description of how LBJ, Earl Warren, and Hoover plotted against the critical movement. (pgs 356-61) The authors note how quickly Johnson shifted the tone and attention in South Vietnam after Kennedy’s death. (p. 275) Finally, they show that it was Arlen Specter who actually composed Dave Powers’ false affidavit about where the direction of the shots came from in Dealey Plaza. (p. 308)

Unfortunately, that’s about it for the positives. Which is a really bad batting average for a book of over 800 pages. Yet none of the travesty listed above stops people like Rex Bradford and John Simkin from having Waldron do interviews on their web sites. Which makes me think the assassinations are really more of a business interest for these two entrepreneurs than a pursuit of historical truth.

Let me conclude with one last point. One which I actually was not going to bring up at all. But I have to. Because, near the end, the authors bring it up themselves. Some of the supporters of Ultimate Sacrifice, like Mark Crispin Miller, have said that I accused Waldron of being some kind of agent in my review of that book. I did not. If you read the review carefully, I was talking about Gus Russo in that regard. And I have analyzed the Russo issue at length in my essay “Who is Gus Russo?” But the authors go out of their way to address this charge by saying that they “want to make it clear that they have never worked for the CIA.” (p. 768) This may be technically true. But it is not the whole story. And we know this from the proverbial Horse’s Mouth. A few years ago, Hartmann was giving a talk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania about one of his many other books. Two JFK researchers were in attendance, Jerry Policoff and Steve Jones. They were both taken aback by one of his early statements. He admitted quite openly to having past ties to both the CIA and corporate America. The question then becomes: If he was open about that then, why is he being disingenuous about it now? To give Legacy of Secrecy the credibility it does not have on its own? Another question: Does Waldron know about this? Or is he just along for the ride?