This isn't just another book about a string of famous [...] resulting in done to death speculation; this is an 848 page volume of painstaking research that reaches its conclusions through a variety of sources including the hard evidence of documented proof (much of it from recently declassified files), film footage, or the taped confessions of those involved. There is enough detail here to satisfy the most addictive arm chair critic of all previous attempts to discover what really went down, yet the narrative is constantly flowing and absorbing.
The only initiation I had into this [...] brew was a documentary on the life of Robert Kennedy, which seemed to reinforce the CIA's `lone nut - magic bullet' theory of Lee Harvey Oswald, endorsed and made official by the Warren Report. What that documentary did show was a very gutsy Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General going for the jugular during a cross examination of a number of Mafioso on national TV, in particular Carlos Marcello and Jimmy Hoffa. The utter contempt shown by Bobby towards those criminals was returned in equal measure by them. This was well before his brother's [...]. I always felt the `lone nut' theory of Oswald was plausible until I found out from reading this book that shots were fired from in front of the motorcade, and Oswald's rifle was in an appalling condition for the type of skilled shot required from the book depository building. The second clue of Mafia involvement was when Jack Ruby, again caught on TV for the whole world to see, committed his successful hit on Oswald as he was being transferred from the basement of a police station, yet I too shrugged at the end of the documentary and thought it likely that Oswald still did it; after all, the CIA were no fools, they knew what was going down, right? . . . Wrong! This book reveals a litany of lies and cover ups masquerading behind that carte blanche terminology so familiar to our ears in recent times, "in the interests of national-security", while missed opportunities left the real culprits "free to carry on their criminal activity."
Legacy of Secrecy details how the Kennedy's inherited from the previous administration plans initiated in 1959 by Vice President Richard Nixon, to take out Fidel Castro using CIA links to the Mafia to broker the hit as Castro drove down to his villa on the week-ends in an open jeep. Bobby Kennedy authorised a stop to those plans using the Mafia but CIA deputy director Richard Helms covertly continued with them. Parallel to that plan was the authorised one by the Kennedy's to use a hidden contact high up in the Cuban armed forces to activate a "palace coup", resulting in a "counter-revolution" using American trained Cuban exiles in the eventual hope of installing democracy.
Mafia Godfather of New Orleans Carlos Marcello, along with associates Santos Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli, infiltrated the Cuban exile groups involved in the coup plan and used it against JFK, whose Attorney General was bringing too much heat to bear on their network of crime (Marcello, who didn't have American citizenship, was at one time deported by Bobby Kennedy). By linking the hit on JFK with the Cuban coup plan, the Mafia knew that "in the interests of national-security" and just a year out from the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crises, there would be a cover up. As the authors stated, "the Kennedy's were playing with fire", even though they thought the Mafia had been excluded from further developments. One can only imagine the grief riddled with guilt of Bobby Kennedy as he too had to keep information about the coup plan from leaking, causing major impairments to a proper investigation of his brothers murder, while Richard Helms, soon to be promoted Director of the CIA by incoming president Lyndon Johnson, had to hide his continued involvement of the Mafia from Bobby and the new President.
This cover up pattern of behaviour would blunder on right up until its undoing with the Watergate scandal ten years on from JFK's death, and just five years on from Bobby's and Martin Luther Kings mafia brokered [...], where illegal break ins to place bugs, phone taps, and confiscate sensitive information became part of the CIA's burgeoning domestic surveillance. The document the thieves were after at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was supposedly a thick dossier sent to them from Fidel Castro, giving a long and detailed list of [...] attempts on his life, the type of weapons used and the people involved, including linking the CIA with the Mafia. Once Nixon sacked Helms from the CIA and was himself forced to exit the White House (exempted from any impeachment proceedings by incoming President Ford, despite evidence of Nixon's own appalling corruption), an eventual CIA Director, George H W Bush, would seem a business as usual replacement until he too was replaced by President Carter.
This extraordinary story shows how profoundly corruption can undermine the foundations of a state. In a telling reference to the Mafia brokering the hit on Martin Luther King, the authors reveal that it wasn't so much the money that interested Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, but the opportunity to compromise people in established and respectable positions of power, referred to as "investment assets". Ironically, the Mafia were aware of the illegal surveillance of Martin Luther King by the FBI, who were more concerned about race riots than the threat to King's life, and it was no secret that the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, spoke in racist language. The hit on Dr. King was carried out when the FBI's illegal surveillance of him was very active, thus compromising their position. More cover ups were to follow, so it is no small wonder that many people thought the FBI were involved in his murder.
One of the great strengths to this book is the candid integrity of its moral indignation when dealing with so many people that clearly lack any conscience, committing murder on a daily basis and some even attending self-hypnosis therapy to ensure they don't bungle the hit. The famous [...] are the three we all know about but the mob destroyed plenty of other lives that we don't know of in order to maintain their code of silence, eventually turning on themselves like "a pack of jackals".
This is a work that poses a serious question for the open society. Should a domestic surveillance organisation be immune from the laws of the society it is meant to protect whilst it flagrantly subverts those laws "in the interests of national security?" The answer is no! The Mafia so effectively compromised the CIA that it's dysfunctional condition poisoned society. In many ways, Russian and American secret services have more in common than we would like to admit. The difference is a few degrees of subtlety in favour of the Americans. The cliché seems appropriate to use again; with friends like the FSB and CIA, who needs enemies?
Truth is so much stranger than fiction and the narrative of this great work has finally delivered some belated justice to the tragedy of a nation.
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Sky ZayneReviewed in Germany on December 12, 2013
Neue Erkenntnisse (?) spannend Verpackt
