Released on: April 23, 2008, 10:26 am

Press Release Author: Martin Luther King Assassination Investigation

Industry:

Press Release Summary: In an Executive Session of the HSCA, Louis Stokes,
Christopher Dodd, G. Robert Blakey and others hear Mafia Boss Santo Trafficante tell
how he contracted with CIA to run assassination operations.

Press Release Body: On a Monday afternoon November 14, 1977 at 2:15 PM an Executive
Session of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F.
Kennedy began it's meeting.

The HSCA Staff was led by Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey and included Counsels: I.
Charles Mathews, Kenneth D. Klein, Donald A. Purdy Jr., John W. Hornbeck, James L.
Wolf, Jeffrey Facter, Jan R. Schlichtmann, Director of Security Robert C. Morrison,
Consultant and Adviser on Law Enforcement and Organized Crime Ralph F. Salerno,
Deputy Chief Clerk Marion H. Wills, Chief Clerk Elizabeth Berning. and Researchers
Leslie H. Wizelman, Ann F. Taylor and T. Mark Flanagan.

Tampa, Florida Native, Cuban Mafia boss and sometime CIA contract assassination
expert Santo Trafficante would testify. He had been given complete immunity and was
represented here by counsel Henry Gonzales and Roger Zuckerman.
After giving his name, Santo Trafficante, and address of 704 Northeast 155th Street
North Miami Florida he refused to answer the question of his work with the Central
Intelligence Agency by saying, "I respectfully decline to answer on the grounds
provided by the 5th ammendment." He then told the committee that he intended to
answer no more of their questions by the same authority. When his immunity was
explained he agreed to answer.

The question of, "During the period of 1960 through 1963 did you have any connection
with regard to any business or activity of the Central Intelligence Agency?" He
answered, "Yes Sir."

As the day and the questions drew out Mr. Trafficante confirmed that Mr. John
Roselli representing the CIA had first met with him at the Fountainbleau Hotel in
Miami asking for the help of the Mafia in getting rid of the Castro Regime in Cuba.
At some point he also met with Mr. Roselli and Mr. Robert Maheu. Mr. Maheu was a
business associate of the wealthy Howard Hughes, had been an FBI agent and CIA
contract employee and as it turned out had given the contract for the Cuban job to
Mr. Roselli who in turn brought Mr. Trafficante in. Mr. Trafficante said that one of
those who would help was the former Speaker of the House in Cuba Tony Verona. Mr.
Verona would become leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Council late in 1963. Mr.
Trafficante further confirmed that Chicago Godfather Sam Giancana was also privy to
the assassination plots relative to the mutually beneficial arrangement. The Mafia
had lost millions with the takeover by Fidel Castro and were anxious to open up shop
again in Cuba.
As it turned out the downfall of this plan came as a result of the President John F.
Kennedy order for any CIA and Military support of the Bay of Pigs Invasion to stand
down allowing for the killing and imprisonment of most of the Anti-Castro forces.

It is clear from his statements during this Executive Session that Mr. Trafficante
was meeting at different times and places where there were other people clearly in
the presence and in alliance with the planning of assassinations. On occasion he
would say that his only purpose at some of these meetings was that of translator in
that he could help when a Spanish language translator was required. It is also clear
that Mr. Roselli, Mr. Giancana and Mr. Trafficante were all proficient in the
English language which would make it quite unbelievable that his role of translator
was needed when the meetings he had with them did not involve other Non-English
language speaking persons.

After the end of the effort to dismantle the Castro Regime he continued meeting with
usual social contacts but didn't see the Godfather of Godfathers Carlos Marcello
during this period. Later Mr. Marcello would testify that he met with Mr.
Trafficante socially at least once a year over a period of over 20 years including
the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Mr. Trafficante said that he met John Roselli again in 1967 or 1968 in Los Angeles
California. At one point he was asked about his meetings with Roselli and Giancana
and he said, "I used to go and bum around with them in the (Fontainbleau) hotel,
around the pool or the bar." This was in contradiction to his earlier and later
statements that he only saw them once or twice in 20 years. Although he had earlier
said that his first meeting with John Roselli was a business meeting in anticipation
of an assasination attempt on members within the Cuban Castro Regime and most
especially Castro himself he changed that to say his meetings with Roselli and Maheu
were only social and not businesss.

Mr. Trafficante said that he knew Frank Sturgis from Cuba and had a couple of
meetings with him. Frank Sturgis sometimes spelled Sturges was born Frank Angelo
Fiorini and later changed his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis. Mr. Trafficante said he
knew him as Fiorini. Mr. Sturgis would eventually have the unfortunate circumstance
of being a Watergate Burglar along with E. Howard Hunt. Photographs were given to
Mr. Trafficante with a request that he identify any he could. Of a couple of dozen
persons in the photos Mr. Trafficante only identified Frank Sturgis as one he knew.

Mr. Trafficante denied that he had made a statement about President John F. Kennedy
that; 'He would not be reelected but he would be hit'. It had been reported that the
statement had been made to a Mr. Alamon and a Mr. Bruno while discussing the problem
the Kennedy brothers had become for the Mafia sometime before the JFK assassination.

Later he would explain that if he had said such a thing he would not have meant it
the way it had might have been taken.

"He was kidnapped, he wasn't deported, he was kidnapped and shipped out of this
country illegally." was Mr. Trafficante's reply to a question about his conversation
with Mr. Carlos Marcello on his return to Miami after his deportation by Attorney
General Bobby Kennedy to Guatemala.

JFK had dealt the Mob a fatal blow to all of their business in Cuba which would have
amounted to millions of dollars each year for many years. To make matters worse for
them he was planning to end the Vietnam War which would have pulled the US Military
protection from the Heroin Pipeline. The Heroin Pipeline began in Burma bringing the
illegal drug to the streets of the US and flooding up to 30 billion dollars a year
into the Mafia's bank accounts which were accounted for by another Trafficante,
Giancana and Marcello associate Meyer Lansky.

After the Bay of Pigs failure President Kennedy fired Allen Dulles who was a
longtime hero of the CIA and a friend of the Mafia due to a relationship of mutual
help and respect going back to World War II. The Mafia had been an asset here at
home and in Italy eventually providing vital help to the US and the Allies in
winning the war. There existed a fear and respect between the Intelligence Community
and Organized Crime which often resulted in mutually beneficial operations that were
far beyond the understanding of the average American. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
was also known to be very uncomfortable with the Kennedy brothers attacks on the
Mafia and fiercely opposed to ending the Vietnam War. He and his neighbor and friend
Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson also had much to gain from the assassination of
John F. Kennedy.

It is in this arena that we find the impossibility, of killing a President, a Nobel
Peace Prize Winner and a Senator/Presidential Candidate with such precision and
organization that the killers are never caught, become not just possible but
probable and even certain.

That is what happened and most Americans, even most people around the world, know
that the government's official position of blaming lone-nut killers for the murders
is truly beyond belief, yet we continue to allow the truth to play hide and seek as
we walk the halls of history in silent contemplation. So, what do we do and when do
we do it; to make this thing that we know is so wrong, to make this thing right?

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