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December 20, 2023 34 mins

Who had the motive? We explore the three groups who had both motive and means to assassinate Kennedy: the Mafia, the Cuban Exiles, and the intelligence community. And we uncover the unexpected ways they were working together. 

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the early nineteen sixties and we're in the hottest
hotel in Miami. Beautiful people, beautiful cars. But tonight, in
a private room, there will be a secret meeting involving
some very strange bedfellows. First, there's a sharply dressed guy
with slick back hair and sunglasses. His name is Johnny Rosselli.

(00:27):
He's a mafia leader in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Next to him is Sam g and Coanna, the notorious
head of the Chicago Mafia. These mob guys are at
the height of their powers. The extent of their controlled
over organized crime is historic.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Just days before he was scheduled to testify to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations, Johnny Rosselli who was found
chopped up and stuffed into an oil drum off the
coast of Miami. Of course, in the telling of this
story's Bill in one piece and very much alive.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Also there is Bill Harvey. Harvey runs the CIA's executive
action program known as ZR Rifle. It's a secret program
designed to eliminate problematic world leaders. He's meeting with these
legendary crime bosses with an official offer from the CIA.
He wants to hire them to kill Fidel Castro.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
It was only revealed in two thousand and seven that Dulles,
the godfather of the CIA, personally approved this arrangement.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
When Rosselli and g and Conna were first approached, they
were offered one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash
to take out Castro, but the mobsters declined the money.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
They don't want the job.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
They wanted the job, but they said they'd do it
for free. After all, they're patriots.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later? What can
we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien. Okay, so where are we in the story?

Speaker 1 (02:15):
We've looked at the weeks leading up to Kennedy's arrival
in Dallas, which included the CIA connected Ruth Paine helping
Oswald get a job at the Texas school Book Depository,
which overlooked Kennedy's motorcade route. We learned about Operation Northwoods,
a CIA false flag plan designed to attack a prominent

(02:37):
American target blame Castro to justify an invasion of Cuba.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
It's hard to believe all of that's real.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
But let's look at the motive. In solving any crime,
you have to ask who had the most to gain.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
And who has the most to gain.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, there are three groups. First, the Cuban exiles, whose
country had been taken from them by Castro. They were
determine to get it back. Second, the mob who suffered
a huge financial loss with their hotels and casinos gone,
and were furious at Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
for cracking down on organized crime. And third, the hardliners

(03:16):
from the CIA in the military, who believed Kennedy had
gone soft on communism and was selling the United States
out to the Soviet Union.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Remember, after Castro took over in nineteen fifty nine, the
CIA trained a group of Cuban exiles to execute a
planned invasion to retake Cuba in nineteen sixty one. The
attack was called the Bay of Pigs, and it failed miserably. Kennedy,
not wanting American fingerprints on the mission, refused to send

(03:46):
the requested air support. The exiles were overwhelmed and slaughtered.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
So first, let's look at the Cuban exiles.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
He knows that followed the Bay of Pig's envision there
developed a very hostile attitude and then the ex commute
toward Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Of that's Fabian Escalante speaking through a translator. He was
a leader in Castro's intelligence agency.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
They were convinced that he was responsible for the failure
of the Bay Bigs invasion and even were saying he
was a Communist.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
My dad was a member of the Pigs invasion.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
That's the son of Ricardo Morales, Ricardo Morales Junior.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
My dad thought JFK screwed us at the Bay of Pigs,
and then he screwed us after the Cuban missile crisis.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Morales refers to the nineteen sixty two nuclear standoff against
the Soviet Union where Kennedy, instead of using the crisis
as justification to attack Cuba, made a deal with the
Soviet Premier khrus Chef to avoid nuclear war.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
And so he was no longer loved or trusted by
by that part of the community, especially my dad. He
no longer cared for JFK as a as a leader
that it helped the Cuban people. They had given up
on Cuba, so he had given up on him.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
So Ricardo before the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban
missile crisis. Your dad got involved to try to quote
get Cuba back from Castro.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Yeah, my dad was a G two agent in Cuba,
which is the intelligence branch of the government. Castro takes
over and then it starts to evolve where Castro starts
going towards Communism, so he has to figure out a
way to get out of the country.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Morales comes to the United States.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
Then immediately he starts becoming involved in the bombings and
killings of Cubans that are working for Castro. And then
he he's never home at that point, he's out, you know,
doing his thing, and he it's very emotional right now. Honestly,

(05:54):
I don't know why. Oh yeah, so, but you know,
he we we thought he was. What he was doing
was trying to free Cuba.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
My mom was Cuban growing up. She talk about the
Bay of Pigs and how disappointed she was in Kennedy.
So I do understand when they say that for them
this was the loss of their homeland, the loss of
their family. But while there may have been a shared
sentiment among many exiles who had to leave, not everyone
acted in the same way. It's important to specify that

(06:30):
we're talking about a very particular group of Cuban exiles
who took really drastic measures.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
These exiles, most of whom settled in Florida and New Orleans,
were not going to just sit by idly and accept this.
Their property was taken, relatives were killed in jail. They
wanted their home back, so they started to organize.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
This is a huge turning point for the exiles.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's Dick Russell.

Speaker 5 (06:56):
Listen to what Castro's former head of intelligence, Fabian has
Klante told me.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
The official of the CIA and.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
An official of the CIA came to a Cuban safehouse.
He seemed very bothered by this and said, you have
to eliminate Kennedy, the pinko of the White House.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
The Cuban missile crisis made it even clearer to the
exiles that Kennedy was not going to help them get
Cuba back. He was looking to forge a path to
peace with Cuba and the Soviet Union, and it was
made clear by his famous speech that he gave at
American University. He took the position that was directly at
odds with the exiles who wanted their island back. Kennedy

(07:38):
was standing in their way.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
So that's the first group you've established the motive for
the Cuban exiles.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Next is La Coos Andostra the mafia. The mafia's goals
were simple money and power, and in the nineteen sixties
they had both. This mob story starts in New Orleans
with a burly mob boss named Carlos Marchello.

Speaker 5 (08:02):
The New Orleans Crime Commission reported that under Marcello, the
local mafia made over a billion dollars annually from gambling, prostitution,
and burglaries.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Attorney General Robert Kennedy was going after Marcello as part
of his mission of cracking down on organized crime. In
nineteen sixty one, Kennedy had Marcello deported. He had him
flown out of the United States and unceremoniously dumped in
a jungle in Guatemala. Two months later, Marcello returned to
New Orleans, and let's just say he wasn't in the

(08:35):
best of moods.

Speaker 6 (08:36):
Marcello had a deep and abiding hatred of Robert Kennedy
by that time, and that was shared by the other
organized crime leaders.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
That's Jefferson Morley again, the creator of jfkfax dot Org.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
The mafia despised the Attorney General, who they felt was
targeting them. But as we've come to know, when the
mob makes it decision, it's not personal, it's strictly business,
and they had a really good business reason to dislike
the Kennedys.

Speaker 6 (09:08):
In nineteen fifty nine, Castro took power and through organized
crime out of Havana.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Marcello and his partner Santo Traficanti ran Cuba. They called
it the Las Vegas of the Caribbean. When Castro took over,
they lost everything. Cuba was truly a second Vegas to them. Casinos, drugs, women.
It's impossible to place a number behind these profits, but
the business was huge, massive revenue streams, and growth potential

(09:37):
was off the charts. Then Castro cuts them off. He
shuts down their boomy casino and drug business. So now
their goal is get rid of Castro. So you have
the classic definition of strange bedfellows, the mafia and the CIA.

Speaker 6 (09:52):
The relationship between the CIA and the American mafia had
begun in World War Two when the US invaded it
through the South, and they didn't want any problem with
the organized crime syndicates. That really controlled that part of Italy,
and so they made an agreement with the mafia that
they could continue to run their casinos. The US occupation

(10:13):
wouldn't bother them, and in return, these crime syndicates would
assist the US occupation.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
And guess who came up with that idea The poet
spy James Jesus Angleton. He was stationed in Italy at
the time, and under his guidance the relationship between the
CIA and the mafia began. Angleton relied on his contacts
with organized crime throughout the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
So the CIA and the mafia have this history of
working together, and in this moment, which is the early
nineteen sixties, their motives are aligned against Castro.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
The hardliners in the CIA and the military felt that
Kennedy was betraying the country. He had gone soft on
communism and in order to stop it spread, you get
rid of anything or anyone that stand And there was
also an additional motive for Allan Dulles, the godfather of
the CIA.

Speaker 7 (11:07):
I believe that President Kennedy had alienated much of the
US establishment by the time he was killed in Dallas.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
That's David Talbot again. Author of the book on Alan Dulles,
The Devil's Chessboard.

Speaker 7 (11:20):
I think he alienated not only much of his own government,
but the national security establishment and the military industrial complex
that was making so much money, frankly off the state
of permanent war. He and his brother who came from
Wall Street, a very powerful law firm on Wall Street,
the Rockefeller brothers, the oil industry, the weapons manufacturers, these

(11:45):
were all their clients. And they had had it with
President Kennedy and his efforts at peace.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
What exactly does that mean? They had had it with him.

Speaker 7 (11:55):
They said this was putting the country at risk. They
thought that President Kenny was a week president, that he
was a Week leader, that he was an peaser, and
he had to be removed from office.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
In October of nineteen sixty three, just weeks prior to
the assassination, JFK signaled that he was going to start
a withdrawal from Vietnam. He put it in writing in
National Security Memo two sixty three, which he sent to
a Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
National Security Memo two sixty three stated that the president
would withdraw a thousand military personnel from South Vietnam by
the end of nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
The memo says, quote, A major part of the US
military task can be completed by the end of nineteen
sixty five.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Right he was telling everyone that this wasn't our war.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
McNamara had gone on the record stating that if JFK
had lived, he would have withdrawn the US from Vietnam
after the election.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Just think how history could have changed. Memo two sixty
three had actually ever gone into effect.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
And it was the beginning, in my opinion, to the
divide that we have today. When Blenda Johnson became president,
he rescinded Kennedy's memo and he issued a new one
in which he called for an immediate halt to the
withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Johnson signed the memo on
November twenty sixth, nineteen sixty three, one day after President

(13:28):
Kennedy's funeral.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Rob has established his belief that the mafia, the Cuban exiles,
and the hardliners in the CIA and military all had
motive to kill President Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Their motives were different, but they were completely aligned. They
just needed someone to put it all together, someone who
had the means to pull something like this off.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
So the popular theory is that the CIA had the
means to make it happen.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
But not in any what you would think official capacity. Remember,
this is all about plausible deniability. To do something this
world changing, the assassination of an American president, it would
have to be done in a way that couldn't be
traced back. A team would have to be assembled on
a need to know basis. Certainly people like Alan Dulles,

(14:22):
James Angleton, and Bill Harvey would know how to pull
this off.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Harvey, you might recall, was the man Dullest placed in
charge of ZR Rifle, the CIA's executive action program. In
his reporting, Jefferson Morley describes Harvey as quote an assassination specialist.

Speaker 6 (14:40):
For most of that time, Harvey was a raging alcoholic.
He was a bitter critic of President Kennedy and his brother.
Bill Harvey was, in the words of his colleagues, a
very dangerous man.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Here's General Lansdale, who was in the Air Force and
then the CIA. He was a pioneer in covert operations
and psychological warfare. Dick interviewed him decades ago.

Speaker 5 (15:06):
Harvey thought of himself as James Bond.

Speaker 7 (15:09):
He was convinced.

Speaker 8 (15:11):
I think that the anime was after him, so he
always went armed.

Speaker 9 (15:15):
William Harvey, my dad called him a psycho, a drunk psycho,
but he was a dangerous man.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
That's Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, the
legendary CIA operative who became notorious for his role in Watergate.
We'll talk more about E. Howard Hunt later, because you
guessed it. He's part of this too.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvey was so insubordinate to
RFK that he was taken off Cuban policy and banished
to Rome. The humiliation only added to Harvey's hatred for
the Kennedys.

Speaker 6 (15:51):
Harvey became very good friends with Johnny Rosselli, who was
the crime boss of Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
At that time.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
That's Morley again.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
Johnny was also a known KI or. The FBI suspected
him in about twelve murders. So if you wanted to
kill somebody, Johnny Rosselli was the right person to go to.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
I loved Roselli.

Speaker 8 (16:09):
My husband always said, if I had to write shotgun
and that's a guy I'd.

Speaker 7 (16:13):
Take with me.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's CG. Harvey. Bill Harvey's wife, cig was an agent herself.
And here she is talking about her husband's close relationship
with Johnny Rosselli.

Speaker 8 (16:24):
He definitely was mafia and he definitely was a crook,
but he was a patriot.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Well that's weird calling a mob boss a patriot, right.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
But it shows the connection that he had with her husband,
which extended to their feelings about RFK.

Speaker 8 (16:44):
Bobby Kennedy and my husband were absolutely enemies, I mean
just pure enemies.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
And then she goes back to talking about Rosselli.

Speaker 8 (16:55):
He knew that my husband was a patriot and that's
what drew him to be.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Now, pay attention to what comes next.

Speaker 8 (17:03):
And he had been recruited by another guy from the
FBI for assassination purposes on.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Kennedy or on cashtill on Kennedy. That's a big slip.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes, she said that Johnny Roselli was recruited by someone
at the FBI for assassination purposes on Kennedy. Then she
quickly realized what she had said and she corrected herself.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Freudian slip, but a big one. The CIA withheld a
significant amount of material on Bill Harvey's secret operations from
the House Select Committee on Assassinations when they investigated in
the mid nineteen seventies.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
You'll remember former CIA agent George Joanniedes. He acted as
a goalkeeper for the CIA during that investigation. Robert Blakey
still has his regrets.

Speaker 8 (18:00):
Instead of pulling around with people that joeannadies Davis, I
should have been talking to Harvey.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
In twenty sixteen, David Talbot filed a Freedom of Information
Act request for these records on Harvey, among others.

Speaker 7 (18:16):
They refused to release them to me, they said for
national security reasons.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
The following year he sued the US State Department.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
And here we are in twenty twenty three and those
Harvey records have still not been released.

Speaker 5 (18:30):
The records that have been released reveal that even after
the Kennedys banished Harvey to Rome, he continued contact with
Dulles and Angleton. They also reveal that he worked with
a man named David Attlee Phillips.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
What do we know about David Attlee Phillips.

Speaker 6 (18:50):
David Attlee Phillips was a trust fund kid from Texas.
He inherited a lot of money after the war and
moved to Chile and opened up a expat newspaper. It
was there he came to the attention of a traveling
CIA officer named Howard Hunt, the future Watergate burglar, who
recruited him to join the agency, and what his specialty

(19:12):
was was deception operations using the press and radio.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
He was like an Angleton Junior. After Castro took over
a Cuba, Phillips became a point person for anti Castro activities,
specifically working with the Cuban exiles in Miami.

Speaker 5 (19:28):
There were a number of different groups that formed during
this time, and they each had a different method of
trying to remove Castro. Some were more diplomatic, while others
were outright violent. Alpha sixty six in Operation forty were
two of the more violent groups.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
OP forty is a special team of operatas basically assassins.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
That's Ricardo Moreles Junior again his father, Ricardo Moreles Senior,
fought in the Bay of Pigs.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
OP forty became more of a CIA run team that
was ready to do whatever the CIA needed them to do.
Alpha sixty six is just Cubans expats that are furious
and want to blow things up. Alphai six wanted to
go back to Cuban just assassinate Castro.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Alpha sixty six was led by a Cuban exile by
the name of Antonio Vessiana.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
Antonio Vessiana was smart and angry, and there was nothing
he wouldn't do to get his country back.

Speaker 7 (20:29):
Antonia was a wealthy guy in Cuba.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
That's David Talbot again.

Speaker 7 (20:34):
He had been a banker, had been a member of
the middle class there and saw that thought that the
castro was taking the country in the wrong direction, so
he joined the exiles who fled.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Once he was on us soil, Vessiana started making plans
to take Cuba back. He had a plan, but what
he didn't have was money. He had left everything he
had back in Cuba.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
The money for these organization this just has to come
from somewhere.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
That's Morellis Junior. Again.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
You have the materials that are required, the bombs, the
explosives and all that also has to be procured.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
A lot of the support came from a CIA operative
named Maurice Bishop.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
So who's Maurice Bishop.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
I know I'm throwing a lot of names at you,
but stick with me here on Maurice Bishop. This is important. First,
what you have to know is that there is no
record of anyone at the CIA with that name. Did
he even exist? And if he didn't, who was helping
Alpha sixty six? In nineteen seventy six, during the House

(21:41):
Committee investigation, we got the answer, and it was like
something straight out of a movie. Stick with me here
on Maurice Bishop. This is important. First, what you have

(22:04):
to know is that there is no record of anyone
at the CIA with that name. Did he even exist?
And if he didn't, who was helping Alpha sixty six?
In nineteen seventy six. During the House Committee investigation, we
got the answer.

Speaker 5 (22:25):
The committee called Antonio Vesciana in for questioning. Vasciana mentioned
that he had a handler with the last name of Bishop. Again,
nobody recognized the name, so they asked Vasciana to describe
what Bishop looked like. The sketch artist starts to draw
a compositive Bishop based on descriptions from Vesciana and others

(22:45):
who've described.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Him, and then the sketch looked like someone familiar.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
When David Attlee Phillips was testifying to the committee, they
showed him a copy of the sketch. He said, couldn't
identify the person, but it looks like me.

Speaker 10 (23:00):
I want to unequivocally state that Maurice Bishop was David
Attlee Phillips.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
The voice you just heard is Antonio Vessiana's son. He's
reading a statement from his father revealing that David Attlee
Phillips also used the name Maurice Bishop, the CIA's very
own David Attlee Phillips, Angleton's disciple.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
David Attlee Phillips was given a chance to respond in
his testimony to the houselet Committee on Assassinations, and he
denied that he'd ever use the name Maurice Bishop.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Well, he would have to. The implications would have been huge.
In March of nineteen sixty three, Alpha sixty six, under
the leadership of Antonio Vessiana, with the support and funding
of the CIA, through David Attlee Phillips, sank a Russian
ship doctor in Cuba.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
This is in nineteen sixty three, after the Cuban Missile crisis,
in a moment where Kennedy had turned to peace. Did
President Kennedy know that Alpha sixty six sunk that Russian ship?
He did, and that Alpha sixty six was backed by
the CIA.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
He did.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
He must have been furious, he was.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Remember By the spring of nineteen sixty three, Kennedy had
promised Khrushchev that he'd be hands off with Cuba, that
Castro wouldn't have to worry about another US invasion. Kennedy
knew that this attack on the Russian ship was an
attempt to undermine his improving relationship that he was developing
with Russia and also with Cuba. He assured kruse Chef

(24:37):
that he didn't order the attack and would make these
activities stop. And then Alpha sixty six launched another attack
on another Soviet ship.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
So they were intentionally undermining President Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yes, and they even took it a step further. After
the attack, members of Alpha sixty six hold a press
conference where they suggest that the American government is supporting
their actions. Kennedy, needless to say, was livid.

Speaker 5 (25:07):
He had the Coastguards seized the boats of Cuban exiles
before they could attack any more Soviet or Cuban vessels.
He sent planes and boats into the waters around Cuba,
and he banned a dozen Cuban exile leaders from leaving Miami,
including Vesianabi.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Strategies theory about the United States. One from the administration,
and then there's one of the CIA and the Cuban
exiles in the mafia, and they had their own independent objectives,
this need to assassinate Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
And here it is the CIA, the Cuban exiles, and
the mafia all in sync the goal assassinate Kennedy.

Speaker 5 (25:47):
They were working together. The mob was selling guns to
the exiles. The CIA was directly funding and organizing in
the exile groups.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
And here's Alpha sixty six leader Antonio Vessiana Hill himself
in twenty fourteen at a JFK Assassination Researchers conference. He's
eighty six years old and a translator is speaking for him.

Speaker 11 (26:12):
Over the years of his training and his experience in
dealing with the CIA and Bishop and other Phillips and others,
he learned how to become a professional conspirator.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
What it meant Phillips meaning David Atlee Phillips aka Angleton's
protege code name Maurice Bishop.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Correct, correct, Correct.

Speaker 11 (26:30):
The CIA never had an official meeting where they said, hey,
here's where we're going to plan on the murder of
the president. But he happens to know that a group
of officials working within the CIA got together with the
clear plan to assassinate and murder the president.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
And there's one more bombshell from Vessiana, and this is
revealed by another translator. It shows how all the pieces
start to come together.

Speaker 10 (26:55):
I traveled to Dallas at the end of August or
beginning of September nineteen sixty three to meet with Maurice Bishop,
my CIA hander. We had agreed to see each other
in the lobby of a downtown Dallas bank. They are
observed Bishop with a young man I later identified without
a doubt as Lee Harvey Oswalt.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
So you have Oswald meeting with a CIA agent who
is a master in counterintelligence. In September nineteen sixty three,
pieces were being moved around the board, and Oswald wasn't
the only piece being moved. The list of people who
were in Dallas on November twenty second will make your

(27:34):
head spin. Let's start with someone that didn't have to
travel very far, the mayor of Dallas.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
How is it possibly news that the mayor of Dallas
is in Dallas.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well, that in and of itself is not news. But
what is news is what we've learned about this particular
mayor over the years. Do you recall the name Charles Cabell?
Remind me okay, He was the former deputy director of
the CIA and one of the agents that Kennedy fired

(28:07):
after the failed Bay of Pigs evasion.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
And how does he fit into all of this?

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Well. In nineteen sixty three, the mayor of Dallas was
Earl Cable.

Speaker 5 (28:19):
Charles's brother, Earl Cabell, himself was a CIA asset.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
In twenty seventeen, a batch of newly declassified documents revealed
that Earl Cable had secretly worked as an asset of
the CIA during his tenure as the mayor of Dallas.
Those documents came out fifty four years after the assassination
of President Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Mayor Cable was responsible for establishing the route the motorcade
would take, and that route would pass right in front
of the building where Oswald worked. Wait till you hear
the roster of people who arrived in Dallas that morning.
First up have Tosh Plumley, who was a CIA operative

(29:03):
and a mercenary pilot during the fifties and sixties. As
you may recall, he was stationed at Nagshead, North Carolina
with Oswald. The day of the assassination. Plumbley was tasked
with transporting two high profile people to Dallas.

Speaker 12 (29:17):
I was asked to go fly as co pilot on
that particular flight.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's Plumblee.

Speaker 12 (29:23):
The flight was to go from West bomb Beach to
go over to Tampa, and we flew open water across
the New Orleans and some other people got on there
at New Orleans and then from there we flew into Dallas.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Plumbley, like everyone else, was on a knee to know
basis and doesn't claim to know why he was piloting
the flight, but he confirmed that one of the passengers
on board was mob boss Johnny Rosselli.

Speaker 12 (29:48):
Rose Ella was on board our aircraft, so it was
that a couple of other Cubans. I don't know for
sure who they are.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
There was one other passenger plumb Lee could confirm. His
name was Howard Hunt. Hunt was a high level American
intelligen and, as we know, became infamous for his role
in the Watergate break in. Here's Saint John, his son
talking about his dad in Dallas.

Speaker 9 (30:11):
Well, at the time, I asked my mom, where's Papa,
and she said he's in Dallas on business. And I
remember that as if it were yesterday, And at the
time I didn't I didn't put it together with the assassination,
you know, but later on I thought, wow, that was
right there at the same time.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
So what would be the role of someone like E.
Howard Hunt in Dallas on that day?

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Saint John, you once told me that your father was
in Dallas as a benchwarmer. What exactly is a benchwarmer?

Speaker 9 (30:42):
He knew who was involved, where they would go after,
you know, the mission was accomplished, how to get them out,
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I feel that he.

Speaker 9 (30:52):
Knew the points of entry and the points of exit,
and he knew safe houses. I think he was someone
who we had a grasp on the whole mission.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
When we spoke to Ricardo Morales Junior, whose dad was
a Cuban exile working for the CIA out of Miami,
he said his dad was in Dallas and used very
similar language.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Here's Morales Junior translating his father's testimony of that day.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
I was there as a cleaning team, just in case
something went wrong. Those are the only orders I received,
and that's what we did. We were at a safe
house in Dallas awaiting orders. So once the assassination took place,
they called in for orders. Their orders were to return home,
and that's what they did.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Others reported to be in Dallas that day, where Mob
connected Charles Nicoletti, Cia operative Jack Cannon, a Cuban exile
named Herminio Diaz Garcia, and a former member of French
intelligence named John Swetre.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
So Dallas at that moment was like the super Bowl
of covert operations.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
There can only be one explanation for all of them
to have been there that day. They had to make
sure that the president got killed.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Next episode on Who Killed JFK? We follow Lee Harvey
Oswald on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
He knows something big was going to happen that day,
and he knows that he's on the inside of whatever
this thing is.

Speaker 7 (32:29):
And so I said, what's in the package?

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Lee?

Speaker 7 (32:31):
And he said, don't you remember we talked about this
sches Today, I've gone to Branks some curtain Rodge to work.

Speaker 8 (32:37):
When the shots that get to ring out, people really
began to pay.

Speaker 7 (32:41):
I think he felt that the plot had been turned
against him and he believed that his life was in danger.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Solidad O'Brien, and our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle
r Matt George Jason English, David Hoffman and me Solidad O'Brien.
Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pinero. Our

(33:13):
senior producer is Julie Pinneo. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
manager is Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,

(33:34):
mastering and sound design by Ben la Julier. Research and
fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Archival audio
in this episode thanks to the Assassination Archives and Research Center,
the Alderton Family, Dick Russell and Rob Reiner. Business affairs
by Hennan Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Our consulting producer is

(33:58):
Razanne Galliini. Recording in part at CDM Studio and Fourth
Street Recording Studio. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Production assistants
by Roccodel Prior and Grace Barron. Special thanks to Johenig
Rose Arsay and Dan Storper. If you're enjoying the show,
leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform.

(34:21):
Who Killed JFK as a production of Solidad O'Brien Productions
and iHeart Podcasts.
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Soledad O’Brien

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Rob Reiner

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