Santo Trafficante And The Business Of Murder With The CIA

April 17, 2008 - PRLog -- On a Monday afternoon November 14, 1977 at 2:15 PM an Executive Session of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy began it’s meeting.
The HSCA Staff was led by Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey and included Counsels: I. Charles Mathews, Kenneth D. Klein, Donald A. Purdy Jr., John W. Hornbeck, James L. Wolf, Jeffrey Facter, Jan R. Schlichtmann, Director of Security Robert C. Morrison, Consultant and Adviser on Law Enforcement and Organized Crime Ralph F. Salerno, Deputy Chief Clerk Marion H. Wills, Chief Clerk Elizabeth Berning. and Researchers Leslie H. Wizelman, Ann F. Taylor and T. Mark Flanagan.
Tampa, Florida Native, Cuban Mafia boss and sometime CIA contract assassination expert Santo Trafficante would testify. He had been given complete immunity and was represented here by counsel Henry Gonzales and Roger Zuckerman.
After giving his name, Santo Trafficante, and address of 704 Northeast 155th Street North Miami Florida he refused to answer the question of his work with the Central Intelligence Agency by saying, “I respectfully decline to answer on the grounds provided by the 5th ammendment.” He then told the committee that he intended to answer no more of their questions by the same authority. When his immunity was explained he agreed to answer.
The question of, “During the period of 1960 through 1963 did you have any connection with regard to any business or activity of the Central Intelligence Agency?” He answered, “Yes Sir.”
As the day and the questions drew out Mr. Trafficante confirmed that Mr. John Roselli representing the CIA had first met with him at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami asking for the help of the Mafia in getting rid of the Castro Regime in Cuba. At some point he also met with Mr. Roselli and Mr. Robert Maheu. Mr. Maheu was a business associate of the wealthy Howard Hughes, had been an FBI agent and CIA contract employee and as it turned out had given the contract for the Cuban job to Mr. Roselli who in turn brought Mr. Trafficante in. Mr. Trafficante said that one of those who would help was the former Speaker of the House in Cuba Tony Verona. Mr. Verona would become leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Council late in 1963. Mr. Trafficante further confirmed that Chicago Godfather Sam Giancana was also privy to the assassination plots relative to the mutually beneficial arrangement. The Mafia had lost millions with the takeover by Fidel Castro and were anxious to open up shop again in Cuba.
As it turned out the downfall of this plan came as a result of the President John F. Kennedy order for any CIA and Military support of the Bay of Pigs Invasion to stand down allowing for the killing and imprisonment of most of the Anti-Castro forces.
It is clear from his statements during this Executive Session that Mr. Trafficante was meeting at different times and places where there were other people clearly in the presence and in alliance with the planning of assassinations. On occasion he would say that his only purpose at some of these meetings was that of translator in that he could help when a Spanish language translator was required. It is also clear that Mr. Roselli, Mr. Giancana and Mr. Trafficante were all proficient in the English language which would make it quite unbelievable that his role of translator was needed when the meetings he had with them did not involve other Non-English language speaking persons.
After the end of the effort to dismantle the Castro Regime he continued meeting with usual social contacts but didn’t see the Godfather of Godfathers Carlos Marcello during this period. Later Mr. Marcello would testify that he met with Mr. Trafficante socially at least once a year over a period of over 20 years including the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Mr. Trafficante said that he met John Roselli again in 1967 or 1968 in Los Angeles California. At one point he was asked about his meetings with Roselli and Giancana and he said, “I used to go and bum around with them in the (Fontainbleau) hotel, around the pool or the bar.” This was in contradiction to his earlier and later statements that he only saw them once or twice in 20 years. Although he had earlier said that his first meeting with John Roselli was a business meeting in anticipation of an assasination attempt on members within the Cuban Castro Regime and most especially Castro himself he changed that to say his meetings with Roselli and Maheu were only social and not businesss.
Mr. Trafficante said that he knew Frank Sturgis from Cuba and had a couple of meetings with him. Frank Sturgis sometimes spelled Sturges was born Frank Angelo Fiorini and later changed his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis. Mr. Trafficante said he knew him as Fiorini. Mr. Sturgis would eventually have the unfortunate circumstance of being a Watergate Burglar along with E. Howard Hunt. Photographs were given to Mr. Trafficante with a request that he identify any he could. Of a couple of dozen persons in the photos Mr. Trafficante only identified Frank Sturgis as one he knew.
Mr. Trafficante denied that he had made a statement about President John F. Kennedy that; ‘He would not be reelected but he would be hit’. It had been reported that the statement had been made to a Mr. Alamon and a Mr. Bruno while discussing the problem the Kennedy brothers had become for the Mafia sometime before the JFK assassination.
Later he would explain that if he had said such a thing he would not have meant it the way it had might have been taken.
“He was kidnapped, he wasn’t deported, he was kidnapped and shipped out of this country illegally.” was Mr. Trafficante’s reply to a question about his conversation with Mr. Carlos Marcello on his return to Miami after his deportation by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy to Guatemala.
JFK had dealt the Mob a fatal blow to all of their business in Cuba which would have amounted to millions of dollars each year for many years. To make matters worse for them he was planning to end the Vietnam War which would have pulled the US Military protection from the Heroin Pipeline. The Heroin Pipeline began in Burma bringing the illegal drug to the streets of the US and flooding up to 30 billion dollars a year into the Mafia’s bank accounts which were accounted for by another Trafficante, Giancana and Marcello associate Meyer Lansky.
After the Bay of Pigs failure President Kennedy fired Allen Dulles who was a longtime hero of the CIA and a friend of the Mafia due to a relationship of mutual help and respect going back to World War II. The Mafia had been an asset here at home and in Italy eventually providing vital help to the US and the Allies in winning the war. There existed a fear and respect between the Intelligence Community and Organized Crime which often resulted in mutually beneficial operations that were far beyond the understanding of the average American. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was also known to be very uncomfortable with the Kennedy brothers attacks on the Mafia and fiercely opposed to ending the Vietnam War. He and his neighbor and friend Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson also had much to gain from the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
It is in this arena that we find the impossibility, of killing a President, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a Senator/Presidential Candidate with such precision and organization that the killers are never caught, become not just possible but probable and even certain. That is what happened and most Americans, even most people around the world, know that the government’s official position of blaming lone-nut killers for the murders is truly beyond belief, yet we continue to allow the truth to play hide and seek as we walk the halls of history in silent contemplation. So, what do we do and when do we do it; to make this thing that we know is so wrong, to make this thing right?

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