April 15, 2025 • 33 mins
Mobsters Hit Tony Soprano Style Before They Can Testify
By Robert Riggs
The JFK assassination files recently released by President Trump shed more light on the secret plot by the CIA to use Mafia gangsters to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Investigative reporter Thomas Maier, the author of Mafia Spies, his book about the unlikely alliance between the CIA and mobsters, is back to discuss the latest revelations.
This is the second part of my True Crime Reporter® series about the Mafia Spies.
Two Chicago gangsters, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, were central to a Congressional investigation by Senator Frank Church in the mid-1970s
Both were murdered shortly before they could testify.
I was an investigator for another committee working on a related inquiry at the time.
The mob-style hit sent a chill through Senators digging into CIA abuses.
Speculation continues about whether the CIA or a Mafia kingpin silenced the mobsters.
Maier and I discuss the murders and revelations from his new book, “The Invisible Spy.”
His dogged investigation uncovered how former CIA Director Allen Dulles steered the Warren Commission’s investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas away from the plot to kill Castro.
Here's a link to the cast of characters.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
The JFK assassination
files recently released by president Trump
shed more light on the secret plot by
the CIA to use mafia gangsters to to
kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Investigative reporter Thomas Mayer, the author of Mafia
Spies, his book about the unlikely alliance between
(00:26):
the CIA and mobsters,
is back to discuss the latest revelations.
Two Chicago gangsters, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli,
were central to a congressional investigation by Senator
Frank Church in the mid nineteen seventies.
Both were murdered shortly before they could testify.
(00:46):
I was an investigator for another committee working
on a related inquiry at the time.
The mob style hit sent a chill through
the senators digging into CIA abuses.
Speculation continues about whether the CIA or
a mafia kingpin
silenced the mobsters.
(01:06):
Maronite discussed the murders and revelations from his
new book, The Invisible Spy.
His dogged investigation
uncovered how former CIA Director Allen Dulles
steered the Warren Commission's investigation of President Kennedy's
assassination in Dallas,
away from the plot to kill Castro.
(01:31):
Thomas and mafia spies, we saw how the,
CIA
really escaped
scrutiny. It remained a secret about their plot
to use the mafia to try to kill
Castro.
And then they end up influencing
the Warren Commission investigating the murder of President
Kennedy.
(01:52):
What did you discover happened there?
In Mafia Spies,
the person who essentially,
executes, bad word, but executes the plan to
kill Castro
is the head of the CIA, a guy
named Allen Dulles.
And he was,
the head of the CIA for about twelve
(02:12):
years.
He his tenure included a time period in
the Kennedy administration,
but he was also involved in the disastrous
Bay of Pigs
fiasco that the CIA,
had essentially put together and gave to Kennedy
in the early days of JFK's
administration.
And so when that became,
(02:34):
very unsuccessful,
in fact, a number of the people that
were part of that invasion, the Cuban exiles
who had trained under the CIA, they were
caught by Castro.
So there was a whole prisoner of war
exchange.
It was a fiasco for JFK.
He was very upset with the CIA,
and he
he got rid of, Allen Dulles.
(02:57):
But when JFK
was assassinated
two years later,
president Johnson,
asked
Allen Dulles to be part of the seven
member
Warren Commission.
And so,
Dulles was on there, and one of the
things that Dulles did that came to my
(03:17):
attention,
one, in Mafia Spies, my book Mafia Spies,
I show how
Dulles
essentially steered the other commission members away from
looking at this
plan to assassinate,
Fidel Castro.
Castro
said a few months before JFK's death, I
know you're trying to kill me.
(03:38):
And he said that publicly.
It was out in the press there. And
he said, Two can play that game. So
if you're doing
a murder investigation
of the president of The United States
and you're part of a commission, you would
think that they would at least identify and
thoroughly explore
all the possible
(03:58):
suspects, if you will. Obviously,
Lee Harvey Oswald
was the assassin
of JFK.
But was there,
other
factors involved
in that murder?
And it was Allen Dulles who steered, as
a member of the Warren Commission, steered away,
(04:19):
people
on the commission from looking at this Castro
assassination
plot. And so we see that fifty, sixty
years later, these documents that are part of
the JFK assassination,
they don't really provide any smoking guns
about who who may you know, any other
assassins,
(04:39):
involved with,
with the JFK murder. It was clearly Oswald.
But what we do see is a lot
of documents
about the attempts to kill Castro that were
kept confidential,
the CIA claiming, well, it'll reveal
sources and methods and such.
And and so,
(05:00):
Dulles on the Warren Commission steered that commission,
away from that. And so much so that
about ten years later, when some of this
started to come out,
in the mid seventies,
Then president
Ford, Gerald Ford, who was a congressman
in the in the sixties,
(05:21):
on the Warren Commission, he was part of
that seven member Warren Commission. But later on,
Gerald Ford said he blamed Dulles for not
letting,
the commission know about the plot to kill
Castro.
So that was something. And, you know, a
lot of the my interest in Allen Dulles,
comes from mafia spies. But in doing my
(05:44):
new book, The Invisible Spy,
interestingly
enough,
Allen Dulles is also a factor. He's not
the major character.
But he Allen Dulles
was a lawyer, a corporate lawyer, and he
be his spy career really begins
with the first
agency,
the first modern American spy agency. It was
(06:05):
called the OSS, which was short for the
Office of Strategic
Services.
The s the focus of my book, Ernest
Cuneo,
he was
the first liaison. He was really the first
American spy of World War two. He dealt
with the British spies who were based Churchill
(06:26):
put them in the top levels of Rockefeller
Center in Manhattan, and it was Ernest Cuneo's
job to deal with them. But one of
the earlier folks that was recruited to the
OSS
was Alan Dulles. And they actually worked together
with Ernest Cuneo on some of the early,
espionage
(06:46):
schemes that were put together by the OSS.
And then,
Dulles was so smart and so successful
that they sent him to Switzerland,
and he dealt with a lot of spy
schemes
during World War two.
And so,
Dulles was aware of Cuneo. And then after
World War two, when Dulles becomes the head
(07:08):
of the CIA,
which is the new,
and modern,
spy agency that still exists obviously today.
By the 1950s
and even the sixties,
Cuneo was an asset. He was in private
life. He was working with e Ian Fleming,
the creator of, James Bond.
(07:28):
But as I show in the Invisible Spy,
my new book,
there were there were exchanges between Dulles and
and, Cuneo. And Cuneo would at times be
a tipster as an asset, giving information
to Dulles and the CIA.
When
Kennedy's assassination
takes place and Dulles is put on the
(07:50):
Warren Commission,
it was clear that not only is Dulles
trying to steer things away from the, Castro
murder plot,
but in the middle of that,
one of the big things that was con
of concern to Dulles, the CIA, and the
FBI, J Edgar Hoover, was they didn't wanna
be blamed
for,
(08:11):
not protecting
president Kennedy sufficiently enough to avoid being assassinated
by Oswald.
Oswald was already on the radar screen of
the CIA.
Oswald had gone down to Mexico. He had
been to the Cuban embassy. He had been
to the Russian embassy only a few months
before JFK's assassination.
(08:32):
So he's on the radar screen. And so
when when Kennedy is murdered by Oswald,
the
what you see in these recently
released papers
is that,
both the CIA and the FBI were very
concerned about not being blamed for not protecting
the president of The United States. And so,
(08:54):
what happens is that what I found in
my research
is that there are some documents, FBI documents,
that show that Ernest Cuneo, the subject of
the invisible
spy,
was approached he was in contact with Allen
Dulles
while Dulles was on the Warren Commission.
And,
(09:15):
Cuneo,
who had been a journalist, was preparing to
write a story ostensibly for the Saturday Evening
Post, which was a very popular magazine at
that time. A big inside the Warren Commission,
by Ernest Cuneo. This is what he was
preparing.
And his source
(09:35):
was Allen Dulles. And Cuneo, though then goes
to his friend, Hoover,
at the FBI.
And it's documents,
which are kind of known in bureaucratic terms
as cover your ass documents, that in other
words, Cuneo came through the door, said, I'm
talking to Allen Dulles,
(09:55):
and Hoover and another top,
FBI official put this in documents
that said Cuneo is doing this piece,
with the help of Allen Dulles. He says
that Allen Dulles is talking to in fact,
Hoover says that a federal judge who's who
used to be in the FBI,
is also I told him that Alan Dulles
is talking to Ernest Cuneo. But Hoover says,
(10:18):
no way. The president doesn't want this out.
He's gonna get in trouble. So to kinda
cover their ass, if you will, Hoover writes
his memo, the other FBI,
official writes,
his memo and those memos from early nineteen
sixty four. I find and I quote from,
in my new book, The Invisible Spy,
(10:40):
and what it shows is the first known
leak,
of a member of the f of the
member of the Warren Commission to an outside
source during the the deliberations
of the Warren Commission into the death of
JFK.
So I I thought that was really very
(11:00):
significant, and it also, once again, kinda shows
the closeness between Dulles and,
the subject of my new book, Ernest Cuneo,
in the invisible spot.
As a former congressional investigator, the significant thing
I see is that
by not revealing
the CIA's involvement with the mafia and the
(11:21):
attempts to assassinate Castro,
they closed off an avenue of investigation. And
then this was really a murder investigation.
Yeah.
Of course. You know, when you do a
murder investigation,
you have to try to really
pull out all the stops to try to
solve it within seventy two hours. That, you
(11:42):
know, when you when you study how murders
are are investigated
by the police,
you know, and I've done that as a
journalist. I once did a project. We looked
at 300 murder cases on Long Island. That's
one of the things that they say is
within seventy two hours, there's that window.
In
the murder of JFK,
the main suspect,
(12:02):
Oswald, is murdered by by Jack Ruby.
So that was, that was already screwed up.
There were a number of screw ups in
there. But the fact that the Warren Commission
was steered away from,
the Castro
assassination
plans by the CA, which involved, among others,
two mafia characters, Johnny Roselli
(12:26):
and Sam Jean Connor, and they were the
focus of my book, Mafia Spies.
You know, the fact that Dulles steered them
away, it was something that, really affects our
historical understanding,
of
what went on there. And and and and
I have written, and I've been surprised these
new papers that have been released. As I
(12:47):
say, they don't have any smoking gun about
who killed Kennedy, but they show a lot
of detail
about this huge
CIA operation
run out of Florida, essentially an undeclared
war,
that was started with Eisenhower,
carried out by the Kennedy administration.
And then when Warren the Warren Commission is
(13:09):
convened, Dulles
is trying to steer the other members away
from looking at that.
Well, Jack Ruby, who ran
a sensational for its time topless club
in Dallas,
was really a wannabe gangster here.
Did you find him linked to Giancana
out of Chicago? Did he have links there
(13:30):
or links to, the boss in New Orleans?
Well, you know, I have to say, I'm
one of the few people in twenty five
years that have been writing about the Kennedys,
where
I've not tried to replicate
a murder investigation. So the short answer is,
I don't know.
I think other authors should say the same
(13:51):
thing. They don't know.
Rather than speculate and create an atmosphere
of conspiracy
levels and such. I think the biggest scoop,
if you will, as a journalist,
that has come out of,
the Kennedy
assassination
was one that I put,
twenty years ago in a book,
(14:11):
about the Kennedys, and I interviewed,
Father McSorley,
the Jesuit who counseled Jackie Kennedy after the
assassination.
All of her letters, my taped interview
with McSorley, that all came out. But that
was really news because
now we know how,
Jackie Kennedy
reacted and all of the grief and the
(14:33):
thoughts of suicide that she had. This was
all reported,
back when I did that book in 02/2003.
It was in the New York Times.
It was on all of the major news
channels, CBS. It was on the Today Show
and such. That was real news. That was
real historical
news.
Like Mary Todd Lincoln, you know, just,
(14:53):
after the Lincoln assassination.
But I think in terms of,
I think it's important to get, have transparency
and have the records
related to the JFK assassination
all become public, particularly at this late date.
But,
and I think I think that's important historically.
But I don't think there's been anything really
(15:15):
new either about Ruby or any other
conspiracy,
involving alleged conspiracy with with Lee Harvey o
Oswald. And I do think it's really unhealthy
for the American politic to
constantly be engaged
in conspiracies. I think people need to put
up or shut up,
(15:36):
plain and simple. And so I I I
think it's important to look, always to look,
but I think it's it's really important to
also not mislead people.
So
I Robert, I don't know the answer with
Ruby.
(15:56):
Well, one thing that really struck me in
the latest batch of JFK documents was that
the KGB
had,
Oswald under surveillance when he was in the
Soviet Union, even while he was target shooting.
And they concluded
he was a poor shot.
Yet from, you know, the six story of
the school book depository in Dallas, he hits,
(16:17):
he has a headshot on a
moving limousine with the president.
Oh, there's it's loaded with
question marks
surrounding it. I mean, what murder
suspect,
says I was a patsy?
You know, I've, I've heard plenty of murders
where they, they say, Oh,
he deserved it. She deserved it. Blah, blah,
(16:40):
blah. I didn't do it. All that type
of stuff. Or they say nothing on the
advice of their attorney.
But what type of murder suspect says, I
was a Patsy.
That that is really,
unnerving,
to have that come out of Oswald's death,
and then then he's murdered. It was a
(17:01):
to it was a fiasco,
as a murder investigation.
And
it's all to our detriment, certainly to the
detriment
of the Kennedy family
that are crime victims.
And I think that we have to keep
that in mind the closer I got to
writing about the Kennedy's private lives, which I
did in my first book,
(17:23):
and the impact. That's what you realize. They
are crime victims.
It's terrible what happened to them, and particularly
Jackie Kennedy,
to watch her husband's brain
brains blown out. But,
historically, for the country, it's been a real
disservice
for people,
including one particular member of the Kennedy family,
to be fostering
(17:44):
conspiracies
and doubts
about,
legitimate authority.
You know, it's just a disservice to the
country.
In the latest, batch of JFK documents released
by the Trump administration,
did you find anything of interest in there
of, you know, one of those moments of,
(18:05):
oh, you know?
Oh, yeah. I, you know, I found,
a lot of stuff, particularly from my book,
Mafia Spies, like for instance, Johnny Roselli.
I actually found his code,
level. The other thing is in Mafia Spies,
the two gangsters, Johnny Roselli
and,
(18:25):
Sam Giancana,
they had brought in another gangster
by the name of,
Santo Trafficante. He had been involved.
He was like he was
a top mobster in Florida, but he was
also involved with them when they were running
a casino
before
Castro took over in Cuba.
The the mob in America were running a
(18:47):
number of casinos, including the San Sushi, which
was run by Johnny and Sam Giancana,
but also Santo Trafficante
was involved. And some of the documents
that have come out show that not only
was there doubt
by some of the CIA,
agents involved handling all of this, like Bill
Harvey, who had real doubts about Trafficante and
(19:10):
whether or not he was a double agent,
but there were other,
documents about whether or not Santo Trafficante
was was a suspect in the murder, eventually,
of Johnny Roselli in 1976.
And so,
those documents,
the investigative
documents provide a lot more light about the
(19:32):
last man standing, if you will, in Mafia
Spies, which is Santo Trafficante.
Well, and you think Trafficante
certainly killed Roselli. Do you think he killed
Sam Giancana out of Chicago? And interestingly, Roselli
is murdered
as he's getting ready to testify again before
the church committee investigating,
(19:52):
intelligence agency abuses. Both of them were supposed
to testify.
In fact, there were investigators
in Chicago
about to prep Giancana for his testimony
before the Senate
about the whole Castro
assassination plot.
The reason why I think,
well, with Roselli,
(20:12):
there are documents that indicate,
investigative documents,
that are part have been disclosed that indicate
that,
Trafficante was the leading suspect in the death
of Roselli.
But why I think he had a hand
in the Giancana
murder, who Giancana was murdered in in the
(20:33):
basement of his home. He had like an
apartment that he was, he would hang out
at night. And,
and somebody came in with a silencer
late at night and
and popped him,
six six,
shots. And the shots were
formed around his mouth, which was a a
sign of,
basically as a warning to anybody else who
(20:55):
would talk that you're gonna wind up like
this if you talk as well.
And that was highly publicized.
But, the documents that were released, one of
the things,
is that the whoever it was that killed,
Giancana, we don't know who killed Giancana. There
was never an arrest. But, apparently, whoever it
(21:16):
was threw this the gun with the silencer
out the window of a speeding car after
the murder,
apparently was,
maybe heard the, police sirens. That's the theory
of it. But that gun was found
later on. That gun was traced back to,
(21:37):
Tampa, Florida, which is the home base of
Santo Trafficante.
So I think to extent that there is
a substantial lead about the death of Giancana,
coming out of these papers,
I think that's it. I think that's why
I think Trafficante
had some hand in the death of both
Johnny Roselli
and,
(21:58):
Sam Giancana.
And do you think the motive for the
murder is they violated the mafia's omerta, that
you never talk?
Or was he worried about what they were
about to tell Congress?
Well, I think the other gangsters were really
upset
about the behavior of Giancana and Roselli
by getting involved because
(22:18):
there was a national commission of mobsters,
and they were supposed to disclose
things like that to their fellow mobsters. And
then they they never told them.
And also they had got garnered a a
tremendous amount of attention
to the operation of the mafia, which was
by that by the mid seventies,
(22:38):
which much more on the run
than they were in the late fifties and
the early sixties
when the mob in America really was at
its height. It was making tons of money.
And so,
they paid a price. And I think, the
the murder of both Jeanne, Conn and Roselli
was,
(22:58):
in in
in response to their behavior,
whether or not,
it was to keep them quiet about what
they knew. And in fact,
Johnny Roselli faced
the possibility of being deported out of The
United States because he actually came here illegally
as an Italian immigrant.
(23:19):
And so there was talk about deportation.
So Roselli
kind of intimated that he knew something about
the JFK
assassination.
And what he knew, we don't know because
he was murdered. And so that was really
unnerving
to a number of senators
who were part of that committee
looking at all of this.
Gary Hart, for instance, that's a name I
(23:41):
think people would remember.
And, he he expressed
being very unnerved about it, but there were
others,
on the senate,
committee, and they were all very upset
about these murders,
and also the fact that maybe,
both these gangsters may have, been able to
provide more light about the circumstances
(24:03):
surrounding the JFK assassination.
But we'll never know because they were both
murdered.
Well, since Allen Dulles, who was the former
CIA director on the Warren Commission,
steers the commission away from the CIA
plots with the mafia to assassinate
Castro,
Is this part of the reason it's just
(24:23):
spread the conspiracy theories?
Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's a, if you
go to YouTube and you look up Allen
Dulles, there's a NBC
TV program
that he did with John Chancellor
of NBC News, and, it was a whole
documentary about
the science of spying was the name of
it.
(24:44):
So you go to YouTube and you look
it up, it's there. And Dulles is interviewed
at his home here on Long Island.
And he's actually asked,
has the CIA ever tried to murder somebody?
And Dulles says,
no, the Russians, they would do so. And
that was absolutely accurate.
The Russians were involved with a number of
(25:04):
different,
murders and such.
But he said, we would never do that.
I would never ask other members of the
CIA to do something
that I wouldn't do.
And so,
you know, it's a complete lie
nationwide
to the entire country. This is about 1966
(25:25):
or so.
And as I said, that tape is on
YouTube. You can easily find that.
And so it's pretty extraordinary,
the level of arrogance,
that people like Dulles had. You know, bear
in mind, in Mafia Spies,
my book Mafia Spies,
Dulles is quote unquote the bad guy, and,
(25:45):
but, you know, in doing my new book,
The Invisible Spy, which is not about the
sixties,
but it's about the World War II era,
The the, Dulles is a factor in the
invisible spy, not to the same extent that
he is in my book, Mafia Spies,
but he is,
like as as I mentioned, he was involved
(26:07):
with Dulles,
excuse me. Dulles was involved with Ernest Cuneo,
was the subject of the invisible spy
working together for the OSS at Rockefeller Center
in the very early stages
of the world war two. Dulles was a
terrific spy for the OSS. He was arguably
the most successful
(26:27):
spy for the OSS.
And so one of the things I think
the guys that came
the men and women who came out of
the OSS
after World War two. One of the things
that was discussed that Dulles was involved with
was the plots to kill Hitler
during World War two. There were attempts there
was an attempt to kill,
(26:49):
Hitler. It was unsuccessful,
but Dulles was dealing with those German Nazi
spies
that were involved
in that plot to kill
to to kill Hitler.
And there was also a number of conversations
even earlier that if if they had killed
Hitler, would there have been millions of lives
(27:10):
spared?
In other words, would history have been
different different if we had assassinated
Hitler. And I think so cut to twenty
years later when Dulles is the head of
the CIA.
As much as it is
outrageous
to try to kill the a head of
(27:31):
a foreign
leaders to understand
where they're coming from. I think when you
read my book, The Invisible
Spy,
you realize
that people like Dulles
looked at
their experiences with Hitler, and the fact that
they failed to assassinate him and all the
terrible consequences
of that. And they looked at Castro twenty
(27:54):
years later in cahoots with the r Russians
putting,
nuclear threat threatening to put nuclear weapons
in Cuba
Ninety miles away from The United States.
Cuba
and Castro were perceived
as existential
threats
to The United States.
(28:15):
John Kennedy himself said that during the 1960
campaign.
But I think somebody like Dulles and those
people that were in the CIA,
who really cut their teeth, if you will,
during World War Two,
They had that experience with Hitler and the
possibility of assassinating him. And I think that
was in the back of their minds, as
(28:36):
I now see it.
When you look at it historically,
it explains to some extent, at least some
of the background for the Castro assassination
plot.
You know, as as you may know, I
was an embedded reporter in Iraq.
And in that reporting experience over those years,
I, you know, I met CIA case officers.
I know some today that are retired.
(28:58):
You know, they've all struck me as professional,
ethical,
and that it's a they came out of
a very, very different agency than what's described
in Mafia Spies. What's your sense of
what the
spy agency is today and how it changed?
Well, I I I think
it has changed a lot. As you say,
(29:20):
it's much more professional.
There were a lot more safeguards
that were put on the intelligence agencies, including
the FBI
after Watergate
in particular.
There
was a ten year term put on the
director of the FBI.
There was more oversight of the CIA.
(29:42):
And then some, unfortunately, some of those safeguards
are now being,
dismantled,
currently.
But, yeah, I think that the CIA,
became much more professional. I think what happened
with the the attempts to kill Castro, as
I mentioned, I think a lot of the
motivation
in retrospect as I reflect on this and
(30:03):
doing the two books and particularly looking at
a character like Dulles, I think they were
very much influenced by, geez, if we had
killed, if we had assassinated Hitler, we were
told not to do that. The British
discussed it quite a bit in the late,
thirties.
If we had done that, if we had
(30:23):
gotten rid of Hitler,
how much suffering could have been avoided? How
many lives could have been saved? And so
I think that was part of the excesses
with this Castro plot. I think we were
at,
I I think there was also the attempt
by the CIA
in this early sixties
(30:45):
to use buffers, if you will.
You know, in the the Godfather movie, they
actually say, oh, the family has a lot
of buffers. Well, the CIA had cutouts. That's
what they were termed.
And so they didn't want to directly get
involved in assassinating
Castro,
but they did have cutouts who dealt with
the mafia.
(31:06):
And so when you deal with, an entity
like the mafia, and they realized this later
on in in retrospect, that it was a
big mistake
because you can't control they have a different
agenda
than the good of The United States. And
so the CIA members who didn't wanna get
their hands dirty in this,
(31:26):
they kind of relinquished control over over some
of the plots to kill Castro. And I
think that was also one of the reasons
why it turned out so poorly.
And now a revealing footnote on the connection
between Frank Sinatra
(31:46):
and mob fixer Johnny Roselli.
When the movie From Here to Eternity was
in production,
Columbia Studios had well known ties to organized
crime.
Sinatra wanted a role.
Studio head Harry Cohen said no.
So Sinatra took another route. He went through
a connection to the Genovese crime boss Frank
(32:09):
Costello,
who tapped Chicago Mobster Johnny Roselli
to send a message.
Roselli didn't mince words. When Cohen pushed back
warning he had protection of his own,
Roselli reportedly told him, You're an effin' dead
man if you don't cast him.
Cohen cast Sinatra.
Sinatra won an Oscar.
(32:30):
And as a gesture that said everything,
he later sponsored Roselli for a membership in
the elite Los Angeles Friars Club.
The source for this account
and for the Genovese crime family's deep roots
in Hollywood
is retired FBI agent, Mike Campey's gripping new
book,
Mafia Takedown.
(32:51):
In the next episode, Campey joins me to
talk about the real mob and how he
led the undercover operation that helped cripple the
oldest and most powerful mafia family in New
York.
Forget the movies.
This is the real story.
I'm Robert Riggs for the True Crime Reporter
podcast.
The JFK assassination
files recently released by president Trump
shed more light on the secret plot by
the CIA to use mafia gangsters to to
kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Investigative reporter Thomas Mayer, the author of Mafia
Spies, his book about the unlikely alliance between
(00:26):
the CIA and mobsters,
is back to discuss the latest revelations.
Two Chicago gangsters, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli,
were central to a congressional investigation by Senator
Frank Church in the mid nineteen seventies.
Both were murdered shortly before they could testify.
(00:46):
I was an investigator for another committee working
on a related inquiry at the time.
The mob style hit sent a chill through
the senators digging into CIA abuses.
Speculation continues about whether the CIA or
a mafia kingpin
silenced the mobsters.
(01:06):
Maronite discussed the murders and revelations from his
new book, The Invisible Spy.
His dogged investigation
uncovered how former CIA Director Allen Dulles
steered the Warren Commission's investigation of President Kennedy's
assassination in Dallas,
away from the plot to kill Castro.
(01:31):
Thomas and mafia spies, we saw how the,
CIA
really escaped
scrutiny. It remained a secret about their plot
to use the mafia to try to kill
Castro.
And then they end up influencing
the Warren Commission investigating the murder of President
Kennedy.
(01:52):
What did you discover happened there?
In Mafia Spies,
the person who essentially,
executes, bad word, but executes the plan to
kill Castro
is the head of the CIA, a guy
named Allen Dulles.
And he was,
the head of the CIA for about twelve
(02:12):
years.
He his tenure included a time period in
the Kennedy administration,
but he was also involved in the disastrous
Bay of Pigs
fiasco that the CIA,
had essentially put together and gave to Kennedy
in the early days of JFK's
administration.
And so when that became,
(02:34):
very unsuccessful,
in fact, a number of the people that
were part of that invasion, the Cuban exiles
who had trained under the CIA, they were
caught by Castro.
So there was a whole prisoner of war
exchange.
It was a fiasco for JFK.
He was very upset with the CIA,
and he
he got rid of, Allen Dulles.
(02:57):
But when JFK
was assassinated
two years later,
president Johnson,
asked
Allen Dulles to be part of the seven
member
Warren Commission.
And so,
Dulles was on there, and one of the
things that Dulles did that came to my
(03:17):
attention,
one, in Mafia Spies, my book Mafia Spies,
I show how
Dulles
essentially steered the other commission members away from
looking at this
plan to assassinate,
Fidel Castro.
Castro
said a few months before JFK's death, I
know you're trying to kill me.
(03:38):
And he said that publicly.
It was out in the press there. And
he said, Two can play that game. So
if you're doing
a murder investigation
of the president of The United States
and you're part of a commission, you would
think that they would at least identify and
thoroughly explore
all the possible
(03:58):
suspects, if you will. Obviously,
Lee Harvey Oswald
was the assassin
of JFK.
But was there,
other
factors involved
in that murder?
And it was Allen Dulles who steered, as
a member of the Warren Commission, steered away,
(04:19):
people
on the commission from looking at this Castro
assassination
plot. And so we see that fifty, sixty
years later, these documents that are part of
the JFK assassination,
they don't really provide any smoking guns
about who who may you know, any other
assassins,
(04:39):
involved with,
with the JFK murder. It was clearly Oswald.
But what we do see is a lot
of documents
about the attempts to kill Castro that were
kept confidential,
the CIA claiming, well, it'll reveal
sources and methods and such.
And and so,
(05:00):
Dulles on the Warren Commission steered that commission,
away from that. And so much so that
about ten years later, when some of this
started to come out,
in the mid seventies,
Then president
Ford, Gerald Ford, who was a congressman
in the in the sixties,
(05:21):
on the Warren Commission, he was part of
that seven member Warren Commission. But later on,
Gerald Ford said he blamed Dulles for not
letting,
the commission know about the plot to kill
Castro.
So that was something. And, you know, a
lot of the my interest in Allen Dulles,
comes from mafia spies. But in doing my
(05:44):
new book, The Invisible Spy,
interestingly
enough,
Allen Dulles is also a factor. He's not
the major character.
But he Allen Dulles
was a lawyer, a corporate lawyer, and he
be his spy career really begins
with the first
agency,
the first modern American spy agency. It was
(06:05):
called the OSS, which was short for the
Office of Strategic
Services.
The s the focus of my book, Ernest
Cuneo,
he was
the first liaison. He was really the first
American spy of World War two. He dealt
with the British spies who were based Churchill
(06:26):
put them in the top levels of Rockefeller
Center in Manhattan, and it was Ernest Cuneo's
job to deal with them. But one of
the earlier folks that was recruited to the
OSS
was Alan Dulles. And they actually worked together
with Ernest Cuneo on some of the early,
espionage
(06:46):
schemes that were put together by the OSS.
And then,
Dulles was so smart and so successful
that they sent him to Switzerland,
and he dealt with a lot of spy
schemes
during World War two.
And so,
Dulles was aware of Cuneo. And then after
World War two, when Dulles becomes the head
(07:08):
of the CIA,
which is the new,
and modern,
spy agency that still exists obviously today.
By the 1950s
and even the sixties,
Cuneo was an asset. He was in private
life. He was working with e Ian Fleming,
the creator of, James Bond.
(07:28):
But as I show in the Invisible Spy,
my new book,
there were there were exchanges between Dulles and
and, Cuneo. And Cuneo would at times be
a tipster as an asset, giving information
to Dulles and the CIA.
When
Kennedy's assassination
takes place and Dulles is put on the
(07:50):
Warren Commission,
it was clear that not only is Dulles
trying to steer things away from the, Castro
murder plot,
but in the middle of that,
one of the big things that was con
of concern to Dulles, the CIA, and the
FBI, J Edgar Hoover, was they didn't wanna
be blamed
for,
(08:11):
not protecting
president Kennedy sufficiently enough to avoid being assassinated
by Oswald.
Oswald was already on the radar screen of
the CIA.
Oswald had gone down to Mexico. He had
been to the Cuban embassy. He had been
to the Russian embassy only a few months
before JFK's assassination.
(08:32):
So he's on the radar screen. And so
when when Kennedy is murdered by Oswald,
the
what you see in these recently
released papers
is that,
both the CIA and the FBI were very
concerned about not being blamed for not protecting
the president of The United States. And so,
(08:54):
what happens is that what I found in
my research
is that there are some documents, FBI documents,
that show that Ernest Cuneo, the subject of
the invisible
spy,
was approached he was in contact with Allen
Dulles
while Dulles was on the Warren Commission.
And,
(09:15):
Cuneo,
who had been a journalist, was preparing to
write a story ostensibly for the Saturday Evening
Post, which was a very popular magazine at
that time. A big inside the Warren Commission,
by Ernest Cuneo. This is what he was
preparing.
And his source
(09:35):
was Allen Dulles. And Cuneo, though then goes
to his friend, Hoover,
at the FBI.
And it's documents,
which are kind of known in bureaucratic terms
as cover your ass documents, that in other
words, Cuneo came through the door, said, I'm
talking to Allen Dulles,
(09:55):
and Hoover and another top,
FBI official put this in documents
that said Cuneo is doing this piece,
with the help of Allen Dulles. He says
that Allen Dulles is talking to in fact,
Hoover says that a federal judge who's who
used to be in the FBI,
is also I told him that Alan Dulles
is talking to Ernest Cuneo. But Hoover says,
(10:18):
no way. The president doesn't want this out.
He's gonna get in trouble. So to kinda
cover their ass, if you will, Hoover writes
his memo, the other FBI,
official writes,
his memo and those memos from early nineteen
sixty four. I find and I quote from,
in my new book, The Invisible Spy,
(10:40):
and what it shows is the first known
leak,
of a member of the f of the
member of the Warren Commission to an outside
source during the the deliberations
of the Warren Commission into the death of
JFK.
So I I thought that was really very
(11:00):
significant, and it also, once again, kinda shows
the closeness between Dulles and,
the subject of my new book, Ernest Cuneo,
in the invisible spot.
As a former congressional investigator, the significant thing
I see is that
by not revealing
the CIA's involvement with the mafia and the
(11:21):
attempts to assassinate Castro,
they closed off an avenue of investigation. And
then this was really a murder investigation.
Yeah.
Of course. You know, when you do a
murder investigation,
you have to try to really
pull out all the stops to try to
solve it within seventy two hours. That, you
(11:42):
know, when you when you study how murders
are are investigated
by the police,
you know, and I've done that as a
journalist. I once did a project. We looked
at 300 murder cases on Long Island. That's
one of the things that they say is
within seventy two hours, there's that window.
In
the murder of JFK,
the main suspect,
(12:02):
Oswald, is murdered by by Jack Ruby.
So that was, that was already screwed up.
There were a number of screw ups in
there. But the fact that the Warren Commission
was steered away from,
the Castro
assassination
plans by the CA, which involved, among others,
two mafia characters, Johnny Roselli
(12:26):
and Sam Jean Connor, and they were the
focus of my book, Mafia Spies.
You know, the fact that Dulles steered them
away, it was something that, really affects our
historical understanding,
of
what went on there. And and and and
I have written, and I've been surprised these
new papers that have been released. As I
(12:47):
say, they don't have any smoking gun about
who killed Kennedy, but they show a lot
of detail
about this huge
CIA operation
run out of Florida, essentially an undeclared
war,
that was started with Eisenhower,
carried out by the Kennedy administration.
And then when Warren the Warren Commission is
(13:09):
convened, Dulles
is trying to steer the other members away
from looking at that.
Well, Jack Ruby, who ran
a sensational for its time topless club
in Dallas,
was really a wannabe gangster here.
Did you find him linked to Giancana
out of Chicago? Did he have links there
(13:30):
or links to, the boss in New Orleans?
Well, you know, I have to say, I'm
one of the few people in twenty five
years that have been writing about the Kennedys,
where
I've not tried to replicate
a murder investigation. So the short answer is,
I don't know.
I think other authors should say the same
(13:51):
thing. They don't know.
Rather than speculate and create an atmosphere
of conspiracy
levels and such. I think the biggest scoop,
if you will, as a journalist,
that has come out of,
the Kennedy
assassination
was one that I put,
twenty years ago in a book,
(14:11):
about the Kennedys, and I interviewed,
Father McSorley,
the Jesuit who counseled Jackie Kennedy after the
assassination.
All of her letters, my taped interview
with McSorley, that all came out. But that
was really news because
now we know how,
Jackie Kennedy
reacted and all of the grief and the
(14:33):
thoughts of suicide that she had. This was
all reported,
back when I did that book in 02/2003.
It was in the New York Times.
It was on all of the major news
channels, CBS. It was on the Today Show
and such. That was real news. That was
real historical
news.
Like Mary Todd Lincoln, you know, just,
(14:53):
after the Lincoln assassination.
But I think in terms of,
I think it's important to get, have transparency
and have the records
related to the JFK assassination
all become public, particularly at this late date.
But,
and I think I think that's important historically.
But I don't think there's been anything really
(15:15):
new either about Ruby or any other
conspiracy,
involving alleged conspiracy with with Lee Harvey o
Oswald. And I do think it's really unhealthy
for the American politic to
constantly be engaged
in conspiracies. I think people need to put
up or shut up,
(15:36):
plain and simple. And so I I I
think it's important to look, always to look,
but I think it's it's really important to
also not mislead people.
So
I Robert, I don't know the answer with
Ruby.
(15:56):
Well, one thing that really struck me in
the latest batch of JFK documents was that
the KGB
had,
Oswald under surveillance when he was in the
Soviet Union, even while he was target shooting.
And they concluded
he was a poor shot.
Yet from, you know, the six story of
the school book depository in Dallas, he hits,
(16:17):
he has a headshot on a
moving limousine with the president.
Oh, there's it's loaded with
question marks
surrounding it. I mean, what murder
suspect,
says I was a patsy?
You know, I've, I've heard plenty of murders
where they, they say, Oh,
he deserved it. She deserved it. Blah, blah,
(16:40):
blah. I didn't do it. All that type
of stuff. Or they say nothing on the
advice of their attorney.
But what type of murder suspect says, I
was a Patsy.
That that is really,
unnerving,
to have that come out of Oswald's death,
and then then he's murdered. It was a
(17:01):
to it was a fiasco,
as a murder investigation.
And
it's all to our detriment, certainly to the
detriment
of the Kennedy family
that are crime victims.
And I think that we have to keep
that in mind the closer I got to
writing about the Kennedy's private lives, which I
did in my first book,
(17:23):
and the impact. That's what you realize. They
are crime victims.
It's terrible what happened to them, and particularly
Jackie Kennedy,
to watch her husband's brain
brains blown out. But,
historically, for the country, it's been a real
disservice
for people,
including one particular member of the Kennedy family,
to be fostering
(17:44):
conspiracies
and doubts
about,
legitimate authority.
You know, it's just a disservice to the
country.
In the latest, batch of JFK documents released
by the Trump administration,
did you find anything of interest in there
of, you know, one of those moments of,
(18:05):
oh, you know?
Oh, yeah. I, you know, I found,
a lot of stuff, particularly from my book,
Mafia Spies, like for instance, Johnny Roselli.
I actually found his code,
level. The other thing is in Mafia Spies,
the two gangsters, Johnny Roselli
and,
(18:25):
Sam Giancana,
they had brought in another gangster
by the name of,
Santo Trafficante. He had been involved.
He was like he was
a top mobster in Florida, but he was
also involved with them when they were running
a casino
before
Castro took over in Cuba.
The the mob in America were running a
(18:47):
number of casinos, including the San Sushi, which
was run by Johnny and Sam Giancana,
but also Santo Trafficante
was involved. And some of the documents
that have come out show that not only
was there doubt
by some of the CIA,
agents involved handling all of this, like Bill
Harvey, who had real doubts about Trafficante and
(19:10):
whether or not he was a double agent,
but there were other,
documents about whether or not Santo Trafficante
was was a suspect in the murder, eventually,
of Johnny Roselli in 1976.
And so,
those documents,
the investigative
documents provide a lot more light about the
(19:32):
last man standing, if you will, in Mafia
Spies, which is Santo Trafficante.
Well, and you think Trafficante
certainly killed Roselli. Do you think he killed
Sam Giancana out of Chicago? And interestingly, Roselli
is murdered
as he's getting ready to testify again before
the church committee investigating,
(19:52):
intelligence agency abuses. Both of them were supposed
to testify.
In fact, there were investigators
in Chicago
about to prep Giancana for his testimony
before the Senate
about the whole Castro
assassination plot.
The reason why I think,
well, with Roselli,
(20:12):
there are documents that indicate,
investigative documents,
that are part have been disclosed that indicate
that,
Trafficante was the leading suspect in the death
of Roselli.
But why I think he had a hand
in the Giancana
murder, who Giancana was murdered in in the
(20:33):
basement of his home. He had like an
apartment that he was, he would hang out
at night. And,
and somebody came in with a silencer
late at night and
and popped him,
six six,
shots. And the shots were
formed around his mouth, which was a a
sign of,
basically as a warning to anybody else who
(20:55):
would talk that you're gonna wind up like
this if you talk as well.
And that was highly publicized.
But, the documents that were released, one of
the things,
is that the whoever it was that killed,
Giancana, we don't know who killed Giancana. There
was never an arrest. But, apparently, whoever it
(21:16):
was threw this the gun with the silencer
out the window of a speeding car after
the murder,
apparently was,
maybe heard the, police sirens. That's the theory
of it. But that gun was found
later on. That gun was traced back to,
(21:37):
Tampa, Florida, which is the home base of
Santo Trafficante.
So I think to extent that there is
a substantial lead about the death of Giancana,
coming out of these papers,
I think that's it. I think that's why
I think Trafficante
had some hand in the death of both
Johnny Roselli
and,
(21:58):
Sam Giancana.
And do you think the motive for the
murder is they violated the mafia's omerta, that
you never talk?
Or was he worried about what they were
about to tell Congress?
Well, I think the other gangsters were really
upset
about the behavior of Giancana and Roselli
by getting involved because
(22:18):
there was a national commission of mobsters,
and they were supposed to disclose
things like that to their fellow mobsters. And
then they they never told them.
And also they had got garnered a a
tremendous amount of attention
to the operation of the mafia, which was
by that by the mid seventies,
(22:38):
which much more on the run
than they were in the late fifties and
the early sixties
when the mob in America really was at
its height. It was making tons of money.
And so,
they paid a price. And I think, the
the murder of both Jeanne, Conn and Roselli
was,
(22:58):
in in
in response to their behavior,
whether or not,
it was to keep them quiet about what
they knew. And in fact,
Johnny Roselli faced
the possibility of being deported out of The
United States because he actually came here illegally
as an Italian immigrant.
(23:19):
And so there was talk about deportation.
So Roselli
kind of intimated that he knew something about
the JFK
assassination.
And what he knew, we don't know because
he was murdered. And so that was really
unnerving
to a number of senators
who were part of that committee
looking at all of this.
Gary Hart, for instance, that's a name I
(23:41):
think people would remember.
And, he he expressed
being very unnerved about it, but there were
others,
on the senate,
committee, and they were all very upset
about these murders,
and also the fact that maybe,
both these gangsters may have, been able to
provide more light about the circumstances
(24:03):
surrounding the JFK assassination.
But we'll never know because they were both
murdered.
Well, since Allen Dulles, who was the former
CIA director on the Warren Commission,
steers the commission away from the CIA
plots with the mafia to assassinate
Castro,
Is this part of the reason it's just
(24:23):
spread the conspiracy theories?
Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's a, if you
go to YouTube and you look up Allen
Dulles, there's a NBC
TV program
that he did with John Chancellor
of NBC News, and, it was a whole
documentary about
the science of spying was the name of
it.
(24:44):
So you go to YouTube and you look
it up, it's there. And Dulles is interviewed
at his home here on Long Island.
And he's actually asked,
has the CIA ever tried to murder somebody?
And Dulles says,
no, the Russians, they would do so. And
that was absolutely accurate.
The Russians were involved with a number of
(25:04):
different,
murders and such.
But he said, we would never do that.
I would never ask other members of the
CIA to do something
that I wouldn't do.
And so,
you know, it's a complete lie
nationwide
to the entire country. This is about 1966
(25:25):
or so.
And as I said, that tape is on
YouTube. You can easily find that.
And so it's pretty extraordinary,
the level of arrogance,
that people like Dulles had. You know, bear
in mind, in Mafia Spies,
my book Mafia Spies,
Dulles is quote unquote the bad guy, and,
(25:45):
but, you know, in doing my new book,
The Invisible Spy, which is not about the
sixties,
but it's about the World War II era,
The the, Dulles is a factor in the
invisible spy, not to the same extent that
he is in my book, Mafia Spies,
but he is,
like as as I mentioned, he was involved
(26:07):
with Dulles,
excuse me. Dulles was involved with Ernest Cuneo,
was the subject of the invisible spy
working together for the OSS at Rockefeller Center
in the very early stages
of the world war two. Dulles was a
terrific spy for the OSS. He was arguably
the most successful
(26:27):
spy for the OSS.
And so one of the things I think
the guys that came
the men and women who came out of
the OSS
after World War two. One of the things
that was discussed that Dulles was involved with
was the plots to kill Hitler
during World War two. There were attempts there
was an attempt to kill,
(26:49):
Hitler. It was unsuccessful,
but Dulles was dealing with those German Nazi
spies
that were involved
in that plot to kill
to to kill Hitler.
And there was also a number of conversations
even earlier that if if they had killed
Hitler, would there have been millions of lives
(27:10):
spared?
In other words, would history have been
different different if we had assassinated
Hitler. And I think so cut to twenty
years later when Dulles is the head of
the CIA.
As much as it is
outrageous
to try to kill the a head of
(27:31):
a foreign
leaders to understand
where they're coming from. I think when you
read my book, The Invisible
Spy,
you realize
that people like Dulles
looked at
their experiences with Hitler, and the fact that
they failed to assassinate him and all the
terrible consequences
of that. And they looked at Castro twenty
(27:54):
years later in cahoots with the r Russians
putting,
nuclear threat threatening to put nuclear weapons
in Cuba
Ninety miles away from The United States.
Cuba
and Castro were perceived
as existential
threats
to The United States.
(28:15):
John Kennedy himself said that during the 1960
campaign.
But I think somebody like Dulles and those
people that were in the CIA,
who really cut their teeth, if you will,
during World War Two,
They had that experience with Hitler and the
possibility of assassinating him. And I think that
was in the back of their minds, as
(28:36):
I now see it.
When you look at it historically,
it explains to some extent, at least some
of the background for the Castro assassination
plot.
You know, as as you may know, I
was an embedded reporter in Iraq.
And in that reporting experience over those years,
I, you know, I met CIA case officers.
I know some today that are retired.
(28:58):
You know, they've all struck me as professional,
ethical,
and that it's a they came out of
a very, very different agency than what's described
in Mafia Spies. What's your sense of
what the
spy agency is today and how it changed?
Well, I I I think
it has changed a lot. As you say,
(29:20):
it's much more professional.
There were a lot more safeguards
that were put on the intelligence agencies, including
the FBI
after Watergate
in particular.
There
was a ten year term put on the
director of the FBI.
There was more oversight of the CIA.
(29:42):
And then some, unfortunately, some of those safeguards
are now being,
dismantled,
currently.
But, yeah, I think that the CIA,
became much more professional. I think what happened
with the the attempts to kill Castro, as
I mentioned, I think a lot of the
motivation
in retrospect as I reflect on this and
(30:03):
doing the two books and particularly looking at
a character like Dulles, I think they were
very much influenced by, geez, if we had
killed, if we had assassinated Hitler, we were
told not to do that. The British
discussed it quite a bit in the late,
thirties.
If we had done that, if we had
(30:23):
gotten rid of Hitler,
how much suffering could have been avoided? How
many lives could have been saved? And so
I think that was part of the excesses
with this Castro plot. I think we were
at,
I I think there was also the attempt
by the CIA
in this early sixties
(30:45):
to use buffers, if you will.
You know, in the the Godfather movie, they
actually say, oh, the family has a lot
of buffers. Well, the CIA had cutouts. That's
what they were termed.
And so they didn't want to directly get
involved in assassinating
Castro,
but they did have cutouts who dealt with
the mafia.
(31:06):
And so when you deal with, an entity
like the mafia, and they realized this later
on in in retrospect, that it was a
big mistake
because you can't control they have a different
agenda
than the good of The United States. And
so the CIA members who didn't wanna get
their hands dirty in this,
(31:26):
they kind of relinquished control over over some
of the plots to kill Castro. And I
think that was also one of the reasons
why it turned out so poorly.
And now a revealing footnote on the connection
between Frank Sinatra
(31:46):
and mob fixer Johnny Roselli.
When the movie From Here to Eternity was
in production,
Columbia Studios had well known ties to organized
crime.
Sinatra wanted a role.
Studio head Harry Cohen said no.
So Sinatra took another route. He went through
a connection to the Genovese crime boss Frank
(32:09):
Costello,
who tapped Chicago Mobster Johnny Roselli
to send a message.
Roselli didn't mince words. When Cohen pushed back
warning he had protection of his own,
Roselli reportedly told him, You're an effin' dead
man if you don't cast him.
Cohen cast Sinatra.
Sinatra won an Oscar.
(32:30):
And as a gesture that said everything,
he later sponsored Roselli for a membership in
the elite Los Angeles Friars Club.
The source for this account
and for the Genovese crime family's deep roots
in Hollywood
is retired FBI agent, Mike Campey's gripping new
book,
Mafia Takedown.
(32:51):
In the next episode, Campey joins me to
talk about the real mob and how he
led the undercover operation that helped cripple the
oldest and most powerful mafia family in New
York.
Forget the movies.
This is the real story.
I'm Robert Riggs for the True Crime Reporter
podcast.
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