The Irishman at Dealey Plaza

The Irishman At Dealey Plaza

After reading the book – “The Irishman” on the plane to Dallas last November 21, and seeing the movie on Netflex when I returned, I was taken by the references to the assassination and the similarities to Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

Both books are based on first person experiences – Jim Garrison’s “On the Trail of the Assassins,” and Frank Sheehan’s story as told to Charles Brandt – “I Hear You Paint Houses,” a mob euphemism for killing.  

And both books have been made into Major Motion Pictures that have re-stirred the debate over the murdered president.

A key character in both dramas – David Ferrie, is played by – Joe Pecci in “JFK,” whose role in the assassination drama was to serve as the accused assassin’s Captain in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol (CAP) before he enlisted in the Marines and defected to the USSR.

Now the CAP is important in the assassination story, not only for David Ferrie’s leadership of Oswald’s CAP squadron, but because it was founded in 1941 by D. H. Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination, from where shots were fired, but also because of the documents leaked to the press from the Pennsylvania chapter of the CAP that indicated the CAP cadets were being trained in Counter-Intelligence procedures and were being groomed to infiltrate communist organizations, something Oswald was trained to do and did.

Another original founder of the CAP with Byrd was Cord Meyer, Sr., the father of Cord Meyer, Jr., the head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division and husband to Mary Pinchot Meyer, a point that comes into play later in the game.

“The Irishman” is ostensibly about the story of Philadelphia Teamster Frank Sheeran and his role in the murder of Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pachino in the movie, but it’s more about the underworld associations of these people and how they entwine with that of President Kennedy and his brother Robert, who went to war with both Hoffa and the Mafia.

Hoffa, like J. Edgar Hoover and Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay all hated JFK – with a passion, but as former CIA officer Rolf M. Larsson asked, what makes a man who hates a killer? That’s a big step, not only in having the hate and wanting to do it, but having the capability to do it and get away with it. 

As portrayed in the book and the movie, Sheeran (Robert DiNero) is introduced into the Mafia underworld by Russell Bufalino (Joe Pecci), only Mafia boss serving on the national Commission who was not a big city boss like those of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Tampa and New Orleans.

Unlike David Ferrie, his flamboyant character in Stone’s “JFK,” Pecci is now an older and wiser wiseguy, whose territory includes all of Northeast Pennsylvania and stretches into Upstate New York and Northern New Jersey, open territory for all five of the New York Mafia crime families.  These mob bosses formed what they called the “Commission” in Atlantic City in April 1929, shortly after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago. The Commission was the final arbitrator in disputes among the mobsters.

In November 1957, shortly after the murder of New York boss Albert Anastasia, Sheeran says he drove Buffalino to a house in Upstate New York and dropped him off. The next day the local police took many of those who participated in a major mob meeting into custody, proving once and for all that there was an organized criminal enterprise that J. Edgar Hoover had previously denied existed.

In the book the first mention of assassination related items is (p. 133) when Sheeran is quoted as staying with Hoffa in a Chicago Hotel – the Edgewater Beach, where the Teamsters kept a suite of rooms on the 18^th floor.

“I got to meet a lot of important people. Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana would come by the Edgewater….Later on when Jimmy got to know my work himself, I stayed in the room whenever something was going on. Once in a while Giancana would have a guy with him named Jack Ruby from Dallas. I met Ruby a few times….Ruby was with Giancana and a man named Red Dorfman. One time we all went out to eat and Ruby had a blond with him that he brought up from Dallas for Giancana. There is no doubt whatsoever that Jimmy Hoffa didn’t just meet Jack Ruby, he knew Jack Ruby, and not just from Giancana, but from Red Dorfman, too.”

Jack Ruby was from Chicago, involved in the mob controlled Waste Handlers Union, knew Red Dorfman, was sent to Dallas to represent the Chicago mob there, and called Dorfman on the phone the week before the assassination. But you don't have to be Jimmy Hoffa's hit man, anybody can know that. 

Then (p. 144) Sheeran and Brandt get into the nitty gritty of the matter. In Florida, Sheeran says, “I met Carlos Marcello’s pilot there, too, a guy named David Ferrie. They later said he was gay, but if he was he didn’t make a pass at me. He still had his hair when I met him. They say he went a little nutty later on and carried a makeup kit around with him. You cold tell he hated Castro with a passion, and he was very close to the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida.”

“One morning a couple of weeks after the meeting in at the Gold Coast where I met Dave Ferrie, I was back in Philly at the local and got a call from Jimmy Hoffa, who told me to go check on that thing we talked about. That meant I should go to the pay phone I used to use and to wait for a phone call. I got over to the pay phone and when it ran I heard Jimmy’s voice say, ‘Is that you?’ I told him, ‘Yea.’”

“He said ‘I talked to your friend and he told me to tell you. Get your hands on a safe rig tomorrow and go down to the Harry C. Campbell concrete plant on Eastern Avenue outside of Baltimore. You can’t miss it. Bring somebody to help you drive. You’re going over the road. And don’t forget to call your friend.”

“….We pulled into the Campbell plant. I’ve been down there lately to find it and it’s got a new name, Bensal. It’s more built up, with more buildings, but the old stone buildings are still there. In 1961 when we drove in it had a little landing strip. The landing strip had a small plane on it, and Carlos Marcello’s pilot who I had just met at the Gold Coast, Dave Ferrie, got out of the plane and came over to my rig and directed us t back up next to some Army trucks. We backed up and all of a sudden this gang of soldiers came out of a building and began unloading military uniforms and weapons and ammunition from their army trucks and loading it all onto our truck.”

“Dave Ferrie told me that the war material being loaded was from the Maryland National Guard. He gave me paperwork on the load in case we got stopped. He told me to take it to the dog track in Orange Grove, Florida, outside of Jacksonville. He said I’d be met there by a guy with big ears named Hunt.”

“At the outset of the 1975 (Congressional) hearings, in a shocking move, the CIA admitted to the Church Committee the mob’s involvement and assistance in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the existence of the mob-CIA plot to kill Castro.”

“While the Church Committee was conducting its closed hearings, Time magazine reported in its June 9, 1975, issue that Russell Bufalino and Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana were the crime bosses behind the mob’s ties to the CIA and to the anti-Castro invasion and to the assassination plot to poison Castro.”

Now that’s the first I’ve heard of Bufalino being involved with the CIA in the Cuban operations.

In the book (p.182) Sheeran is quoted as saying, “One morning, a few days to a week before November 22, 1963, I got a call from Jimmy to go to the pay phone….I drove up to Russell’s and when he answered the door all he told me to do was, ‘Go see our friends in Brooklyn. They’ve got something for you to take to Baltimore…”

“I turned around and drove to Monte’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. It was a hangout for Genovese people. It’s the oldest Italian restaurant in New York City…..Tony Pro got up from his table and went to the back and returned with a duffel bag. He handed it to me and told me, ‘Go down to Campbell’s Cement in Baltimore where you went that time with the truck. Our friend’s pilot will be there. He’s waiting for this.”

“When I got there, Carlo’s pilot, Dave Ferrie, was there with another guy I knew from Monte’s who was with Genovese….He said, ‘You got something for us?’….I didn’t even get out of the car. I gave him the keys. He opened the trunk, took the bag, we said good-bye, and away I went home.”

Then they pick up on this (p. 270) after November 22, 1963. According to Sheeran, Hoffa said: “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, the top of the iceberg. Let me tell you – Dallas, id you hear that word tonight? 

\Remember that package you took to Baltimore? I didn’t know it then, but it turns out it was high-powered rifles for the Kennedy hit in Dallas. The stupid bastards lost their own rifles in the trunk of a Thunderbird that crashed when their driver got drunk. That pilot for Carlos was involved in delivering the replacements that you brought down. Those fuckers used both of us on that deal. We were patsies. What do you think of that? They had fake cops and real cops involved in it. Jack Ruby’s cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. That’s why he had to go in and finish the job on Oswald. If he didn’t take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him – put Ruby on a meat hook. Don’t kid yourselfSanto and Carlos and Giancana and some of their element, they were all in on Kennedy. Every single one of the same cast of characters that were in on the Bay of Pigs. They even had a plot to kill Castro with Momo and Rosselli. I’ve got enough to hang everybody. And every last bit of it comes out if anything unnatural happens to me. They will all pay. All those who fucked me will pay.”

Now there was a white Thunderbird in Oak Cliff around the time of the assassination, but I don't believe for one minute a drunk driver lost the rifles - the Dealey Plaza Operation was a first class, well planned and executed covert intelligence operation that would not depend on a drunk driver delivering the rifles. 

And that’s it. 

The first trip to the cement plant in Baltimore in 1961 sounds suspiciously like the Houma Bunker raid where Ferrie’s crew took explosives and weapons from as depicted in the movie “JFK.” And the second trip to the cement plant delivering a duffel bag of rifles sounds very much like Robert Morrow’s story of buying a number of Manclicher Carcanos in Baltimore for use in the assassination.

Now there are some clues that can be checked out – Campbell’s Cement company in Baltimore, but the one I am most interested in is the possibility that Russell Bufalino is somehow connected to the Pinochet family, as they both hail from the same neck of the woods and are very powerful politically. 

Mary Pinochet, the daughter of a former Pennsylvania governor, was introduced to John Kennedy while he was a student by his school mate – William Attwood, who at the time of the assassination was the President’s point man in the ostensibly secret back channel negotiations with Castro. Mary had married Cord Meyer, Jr., the CIA officer who worked closely with Allen Dulles, and whose father formed the Civil Air Patrol with D. H. Byrd. After separating from Meyer, Mary once again became amorous lover with President Kennedy.

On September 15, 1963, the day Mrs. Paine took Marina and the rifle to Texas and Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed by the CIA on their Covert Ops agasnt Cuba, Mary Pinchot Meyer accompanied the President on the first leg of his Conservation Tour, stopping to visit Mary’s mother who had donated land for preservation to the national park service.

For any researcher with the time and inclination to look into it, any association between the Bufalino and Pinochet families would be interesting and fit into this story.

In any case, while it appears Sheeran was a hit man for the Teamsters and the mob, and probably killed Hoffa as he describes, the Mafia certainly didn’t kill President Kennedy, though John Rosselli was involved with the CIA at their JMWAVE station in Florida and was directly involved with the anti-Castro Cuban commandos that were sent in to Cuba with high powered rifles and a plan to shoot Castro in the head as he drove by in an open jeep. That was the plan that was likely redirected to JFK in Dallas. 

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