The Mafia at Dealey Plaza

 The Mafia at Dealey Plaza 

The Mafia and the Mob are two different things. The Mafia is a very distinct, Italian organized criminal group, while the mob can be any group of organized criminals. 

The Mafia came into the JFK assassination picture even before JFK was president. It was during the Eisenhower administration when the CIA's Richard Bissell had his agent James O'Connell visit Las Vegas in order to see if they could develop mutual plans to kill Cuban premier Fidel Castro. 

O'Connell first checked in with former FBI agent Robert Maheu, who told O'Connell that the man to see was John Rosselli, the right hand man of Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana, who controlled all the illegal rackets west of Chicago. 

Rosselli and O'Coonnell agreed, though Rosselli explained he would have to run the idea past his boss Giancana, who said that since it was a Havana operation, it had to include Santo Traficante of Tampa and Havana. Traficante said he could arrange for Castro to be poisoned by a chef who ran a restaurant that Castro frequented. The CIA passed the poison and $10,000 in cash to the expected executioner, but nothing happened. 

After considering other exotic methods of murder including exploding cigars and sea shells and a tainted wet suit that was to be given to Castro, it was decided to have snipers shoot Castro in the head when he drove by in an open jeep, as he often did. Castro did visit the former Xandau Dupont estate on the north shore east of Havana, and there was only one road to it that ran through the resort town of Veradero. The plan was called the Pathfinder Plan. 

And it just so happened that Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) reportely had an apartment in Veradero that could be used as a staging area. 

The Pathfinders were the most elite of the Bay of Pigs brigade, and especially trained to infiltrate Cuba before the invasion and lay the ground work among the local dissidents. When the invasion failed, some of the Pathfinders were rounded up, killed or imprisoned, but some escaped back to Florida where the reunited at the CIA's JMWAVE base at the University of Miami. 

There they were given additional training by CIA trainers John Harper, an explosives and sniper expert, infiltration and exfiltration expert Carl Jenkins, and the Mafia's John Rosselli, who was dressed in a US Army officer uniform and went by the names of Colonel Rawliins. 

Rosselli's CIA case officer, James O'Connell, was replaced by William Harvey, the head of the CIA's ZR/RIFLE assassination project, and he arranged for Rosselli to help train the anti-Castro Cubans including the Pathfinders. 

Two US Army Ranger Captains, Bradely Ayers and Edward Roderick, were also cross posted to the CIA by USMC Gen. Brute Krulak, who was responsible for the Pentagon's assistance to the CIA for covert operations, especially those in Cuba and Vietnam. 

They set up remote bases in the Florida everglade swamp to continue the training in small boat handling, and at Point Mary near Key Largo to train the snipers. 

Even after William Harvey was fired as head of the Cuban desk by RFK, Harvey continued to act as Rosselli's case officer, and they last met in the spring of 1963 in Miami, with Harvey picking up the tabs for their hotel, meals and drinks, using the ZR/RIFLE account to pay those bills. 

FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on their covert operations in Cuba, and Gen. Krulak's aide Col. Higgins took notes, which reflected the fact that FitzGerald said the CIA had studied the German military's Jully 20 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler in detail, in order to develop 

Harvey was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald, who also acted as the case officer for Cubella (AMLASH), who was meeting with CIA agents including FitzGerald himself to plan the assassination of Castro. 

MORE TO COME ON THIS.

The Atlantic City Mob Museum

 

THE ATLANTIC CITY MOB MUSEUM 

The mobsters walking down the Atlantic City boardwalk, including Meyer Lansky, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Nucky Johnson. Note; This is a composite photo put together by William Randolph Herst syndicate. 

This story originally appeared in the Jersey Shore Local Newsmagazine 

https://shorelocalnews.com/the-case-for-an-atlantic-city-mob-museum/

There isn’t an Atlantic City Mob Museum, yet, but there should be one.

The Las Vegas Mob Museum is now the most popular tourist attraction in Vegas outside of the casinos, even though the history of the mob there pales in comparison to Atlantic City.

While mobsters didn’t arrive in Las Vegas until Bugsy Siegel built his Flamingo Hotel-Casino in 1946, Atlantic City has a history of mobsters dating back to the 1890s, and is infamous for the long reigns of such noteworthy city bosses as Enoch “Nucky” Johnson and Hap Farley for most of the 20th century.

The Vegas Mob Museum even celebrated the 1929 Atlantic City Conference of crime bosses from around the country in an exhibit focusing on Al Capone’s attendance at the proceedings. The conference was ostensibly held to celebrate Meyer Lansky’s wedding, but the actual reason was to decide what to do with Capone: the mob boss behind the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago which killed seven and brought unwanted scrutiny on all of the mobsters.

Lansky kept a low profile because he wasn’t Italian like most of the mobsters; he was a Jewish accountant who handled the mob’s money. The organization, at least in New York City, was run by old-timers they called “Mustache Petes,” who were at war with one another. Lansky was childhood friends with Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Bugsy Siegel, who were in the mafia and were preparing to take over the rackets after the Mustache Petes killed each other off.

Luciano called for the 1929 conference and arranged for it to be held in Atlantic City, which was known as an “open” city where Nucky Johnson ran things. Luciano invited all the big-city mob bosses from around the country to be there. The new Convention Hall on the Boardwalk had just been completed, and the mobsters mostly stayed at the President Hotel at the south end of the Boardwalk. They met casually at bars and restaurants, and walked along the beach in small groups so the sounds of the breaking waves drowned out their conversations.

 

The main topic was what to do with Capone, who brought the heat down on all of them by killing off Bugs Moran’s gang in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that same year. While they discussed what to do with him, Capone reportedly hid out in the men’s locker room of the Atlantic City Country Club in Northfield.

Another topic on the agenda was a permanent solution to mob violence. Luciano advocated Lansky’s proposal – to run their businesses like major corporations do, complete with a board of directors. If there were a problem between different city mobs, the board would negotiate a solution. They were called the National Syndicate of Organized Crime or just the Syndicate, while the board was called the Commission. Luciano was appointed the chairman, while big-city bosses would have “sitdowns” together including bosses from Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Chicago, Tampa and Havana.

Most of their profits at the time were generated by bootlegging. The end of prohibition was coming which meant that they would have to get into other businesses. Lansky proposed gambling: big-time casino gambling beginning in Florida and Havana where Lansky had connections with the Cuban dictators, especially Fulgencio Batista. Lansky arranged for legal Havana casinos to be located only in large hotels, and the Syndicate bosses would own all those hotels, mainly patronized by American tourists.

As for Capone, he had to take the rap for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and do jail time. So he took a train to Philadelphia where he was met by a friendly policeman he knew, turned over his revolver, and was arrested for having the weapon. Given a one-year sentence handed down by a bought-off judge, Capone was incarcerated at Eastern State Penitentiary, now a popular Philadelphia museum, where his cell is a prime tourist attraction. He was allowed to have rugs, a lounge chair, a comfortable bed, a radio and had food catered to him until he was released after nine months on good behavior.

Luciano was also arrested and put in jail, but during World War II he made a deal to help US Navy Intelligence protect American docks and shipping from Nazi saboteurs, paving the way for the successful invasion of Sicily. He was released from prison because of his patriotic assistance to the war, but he was forced into exile, first going to Havana, then a popular tourist and gambling destination for Americans, where they held another conference before Luciano retired to Italy.

When the Mustache Petes faded away, Luciano took control of New York where there were five mafia families. Other areas with representatives on the board included Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia, Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, Russell Buffalino of Northeast Pennsylvania, Sam Giancana of Chicago, and Santo Trafficante of Tampa and Havana. Each one of these bosses was given a percentage of the casino profits – illegal casinos in Saratoga, N.Y., Florida, and legal casinos in Havana and Las Vegas.

When the Flamingo, Bugsy Siegel’s hotel casino in Las Vegas, opened in 1946 and quickly foundered, the mob bosses were tired of his excuses and bankrolling him. He owed them $10 million, an unpayable amount, so on the orders of the Commission he was killed – shot in the head by a sniper as he sat in the Hollywood apartment of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

With Luciano gone, the five New York mafia families fought among themselves and Sam Giancana assumed a leadership role, obtaining control of all the mob rackets west of Chicago including Detroit, California, and Las Vegas, where his right-hand man, John Rosselli, was put in control.

Old man Joe Kennedy owned many of the Canadian whiskey and Caribbean rum companies, which were legal in those countries. Kennedy sold his liquor to American bootleggers in the prohibition era, including Nucky Johnson and Sam Giancana, and he owned a piece of the Cal-Neva Lodge casino hotel near Lake Tahoe.

He sold his Tahoe interests to Giancana who had his friend, Frank Sinatra, front for him as the owner. Sinatra brought in his trusted friend, Skinny D’Amato, to run the casino.

D’Amato owned the 500 Club in Atlantic City where Sinatra often performed. D’Amato’s family ran the 500 Club while Skinny was in Nevada. Sinatra was also pals with Joe’s son, Senator John Kennedy, future president of the United States. They drank, smoked cigars and had romantic ties to the same women, including Judith Campbell, who was also Giancana’s girlfriend.

                                                        JFK and Sinatra at the Inagural Ball 

When JFK ran for president, Sinatra provided his theme song, “High Hopes,” and D’Amato helped JFK win the critical West Virginia primary to get him the nomination. Giancana ensured that Illinois would go with Kennedy in the election. Sinatra was put in charge of providing the entertainment for Kennedy’s inauguration and helped arrange for Atlantic City to get the 1964 Democratic National Convention when it was assumed Kennedy would be renominated. Events would play out differently, however.

                            Skinny D'Amato advising Sen. JFK during campaign stop in New Jersey 

Judith Campbell served as a courier between JFK and Giancana, and even visited the White House. But when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover found out about the relationship, he warned the president through Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, that the FBI was onto the relationship and that it was unwise and dangerous. So Kennedy broke off his association with Campbell and Giancana, as well as Sinatra. Giancana and Sinatra didn’t like having a falling out with the president, whom they helped get elected, especially when JFK’s brother began to prosecute the mobsters.

Then, just like Bugsy Siegel, JFK was shot in the head by a sniper and killed. While Lee Harvey Oswald was blamed for the crime, Giancana and Rosselli were considered suspects, and Rosselli was murdered shortly after testifying in a secret congressional session about the assassination. Giancana was killed shortly before he was to testify. All of this is the subject of a major motion picture, now in production, titled “2 Days, 1963.” Directed by David Mamet, it stars Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, Shia LaBeouf and Courtney Love.

So when the Super Bowl is played in Las Vegas this weekend, the most popular tourist attraction besides casinos and football will be the Las Vegas Mob Museum where you can learn all about the history of organized crime, the Syndicate and the Commission and how it all began in Atlantic City.

The Mob Museum, which opened in 2012, is a nonprofit corporation, but is very successful, charging $25 admission and featuring photos, films and lectures. Such a museum should be established in Atlantic City, with seed money from the Atlantic City Casino Reinvestment Development Authority and a building furnished from unused property owned by the city.

Right now there is no Atlantic City Mob Museum, but there should be and can be, if the powers that be deem it worthwhile.

NOTE ABOUT SOURCES – Information about the 1929 conference of mob bosses in Atlantic City can be found on the Las Vegas Mob Museum website. Background on Joe Kennedy, Sam Giancana, Cal-Neva Lodge, Judith Campbell and JFK is from Seymour Hersh’s “The Dark Side of Camelot.” The best source on Skinny D’Amato, Frank Sinatra and the 500 Club is Jonathan Van Meter’s “The Last Good Time.”

Billkelly3@gmail.com

Was the Real James Bond a Spy?

 Was the Real James Bond a Spy? 

Well the evidence is not as strong as it is for two other Ian Fleming characters from Philadelphia - Cummins Catherwood, who was featured as Milton Krest in the short story The Hybred Rarity, or Henry Pleasants, 007-s frequent CIA sidekick Felix Leiter, as both were strongly affiliated with the CIA. Catherwood allowed his non-profit Catherwood Foundation to be used by the CIA to fund covert operations, as revealed by David Wise and Thomas Ross in their book The Invisible Government. 

Wise and Ross also reveal that former OSS officer Henry Pleasants, who debriefed Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, also wrote classical and jazz music reviews for the Philadelphia Bulletin and New York Times, a background Fleming attributes to Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die when Leiter accompanies James Bond to a jazz club in Harlem. Pleasants later became the CIA Chief of Station in Bonn, Germany while continuing writing about music. 

And both men had connections to Fleming. One of the members of the Catherwood Fund board of directors was a friend of  Ian's brother Peter Fleming, and after thinking about it for a few moments, Pleasants told me that his wife Virginia, a former harpsacordist in the Philadelphia Orchestra, was in a small chamber music group in London with Fleming's sister, who played the cello. 

As for James Bond, the Curator of Birds at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and author of the book Birds of the West Indies, he attended Cambridge University, the school of spys, most notably the Cambridge Spy ring (Kim Philby et al.), and was a member of the Pitt Club, that Guy Burgess would also be a member of. 

Mrs. Bond, in on of her books about her husband - Far Afield in the Caribbean, mentions that in 1938 James Bond sailed on a tramp steamer with Somerset Maugham, a famous writer and important British spy who was sent to Russia in 1917 to prevent the Communist revolution, a mission that failed but emphasized his importance. 

Maugham, the author of numerous classic novels such as The Razors Edge, also wrote Ashenden, one of the earliest spy novels based on his own, personal experiences.

Did Maugham recruit Bond on that voyage? When I asked Bond about meeting Maugham, he said Maugham said he was on his way to Devil's Island, and didn't talk much. But I also noticed, on the book shelf next to the door of his apartment, was a complete works of first edition volumes of Somerset Maugham, so Bond must have read him, something he failed to do with any of Ian Fleming's books. 

I also recalled that during England's war with the Argentina over the Faulkland islands, a TV cliip showed British soldiers being briefed on the terrain they would expect when they landed, a briefing by the last Englishman who was on that beach - a birdwatcher. 

In 1948 Bond did sail with Catherwood on his yacht The Vigilant, visiting remote out island like Old Providence, where Morgan the Pirate's treasure was rumored to be burried. When I asked Bond about Catherwood, he didn't have anything nice to say. Bond described him as a imprudent millioinaire who made the voyage unbearable. But the Bond and Catherwood connection is set in stone aboard the Vigilant. 

Mrs. Bond  reports that during WWII Bond encountered a German on a mountain in Haiti, and though it important enough to report the fact to the FBI, but they then began investigating Bond, why was he there? 

Bond was also investigated by J. Edgar Hover's FBI after the Cambridge spy ring was uncovered, as all Americans who attended Cambridge were. 

And as Mrs. Bond recounts in her books, James Bond was at the Bay of Pigs a few weeks before the CIA backed anti-Castro brigade landed there. And he picked up some important intelligence information - that new roads had been constructed to that remote swamp. Did Bond convey that information to the CIA? 

In his new biography of James Bond, Jim Wright mentions my work and association with Bond, and questioning whether or not Bond was a spy, but he says that he could not obtain Cummins Catherwood's CIA file even though Catherwood's CIA credentials had been exposed, not only by Wise and Ross in The Invisible Government, but by Joseph Smith in his Portrait of a Cold Warrior as he used the Catherwood Foundation as a front for his CIA mission to the Phillipines. 

And of course, Kim Philby, the most important double agent of all time, reported in his book My Silent War, that when he was British Secret Intelligence Service liaison to the CIA, Frank Wisner explained to him how they were using private Foundations as a cover for their covert operations. 

So the answer to the question of whether the real James Bond was a spy must remain inconclusive, but maybe someday the records of the agency will reveal the truth. 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

How I Came to Meet James Bond

 How I Came to Meet James Bond - William Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com 

It was in the course of my JFK Assassination research when I came across the real James Bond. It must have been some November anniversary, probably around 1973-5, when Philadelphia Magazine ran a story of the Philadelphia connections to the assassination. 

The late great Alan Halpern was the editor then, and his protege Gaeton Fonzi was off to Washington or Florida working for Sen. Richard Schweiker and the Church Intelligence Committee and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so the article was written by another good investigative reporter Michael Malowe. 

Warren Commission lawyers William Coleman and Arlen Spector were both from Philadelphia, as was later HSCA chief counsel Richard Sprague. Then living there at the time were Ruth Paine, Michael Paine's mother Ruth Forbes Paine and her husband Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, as well as Priscilla Johnson, critics professor Joshia Tink Thompson, film buff Robert Groden and my old college mate John Judge. 

As I was born and raised across the Delaware River in Camden, NJ, I often visited Judge, who worked at a Quaker center on Walnut Street near Rittenhouse Square and lived in a Germantown mansion with two other former University of Dayton school mates, where we would listen to Mae Brussell "World Watcher" radio broadcast tapes. 

One of John's jobs at the Quaker center was to call supporters on the phone and ask for donations, and one day he told me he called Ruth Paine and she made a donation. 

The Philadelphia magazine article in question included an interview with Ruth Paine, but it also somehow connected her to a mysterious foundation - the Catherwood Foundation, which was connected to the CIA. 

The book The Invisible Government (Wise and Ross) exposed the CIA's foundation system for financing covert operations, listing the Catherwood Fund among a dozen or so others. Double agent Kim Philby, in his book My Sikent War, related how while he was the British SIS liason to the CIA Frank Wisner explained to him how rich Americans were convinced to establish foundations and funds the CIA could funnel their money through, so it was a secret only kept from the American people.

So I did what I routinely do when I come across a new name and went to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin archives, called the morgue, where I looked up Cartherwoods file.

The Bulketin paid old ladies tjo clip every story, circle each name mentioned, and place the clipping in an envelope with that person's name on it, that was fiked in metal cabinets alphabetically.

Cummins Catherwood's envelope was bulging with clips that I took over to a nearby table to read. It was late at night so few people were around but the editor Tom Flynn came over and asked what I was working on.

As a millionaire who inherited his millions from a family munitions industry, his CIA work clearly stood out, as the Catherwood Fund backed the Cuban Aid Relief, established to support anti-Castro Cuban professionals in exile.

Catherwood also used his tax exempt Fund to have a large sailing yacht built, the Vigilant, that in 1948, he took four scientists to Caribbean out islands, one of whom studied mollusks, another was "James Bond, whose main interest is birds."

At first I thought it was a joke, a CIA agent using James Bond as an alias, but then looked at the date- 1948, and realized it was before Ian Fleming made James Bond the world's most famous spy.

With that I packed it in, and put Catherwoods envelop back in the filing cabinet and went over to visit a friend, WMMR radio news man Bill Vitka. Sitting listening to records and sipping wine, I told him about Catherwood and Janes Bond, and he recalled reading an interview with Ian Fleming in which he said he took the James Bond name for 007 from a Philadelphia ornithologist.

Later, when I returned to the Bulletin clipping morgue, I took out the envelope labeled Bond, James, and confirmed Vitka's memory.

The one and only real James Bond is the Philadelphia ornithologist who wrote the field guide Birds of the West Indies, a copy of which I obtained from the Princeton Antique Book shop in Atlantic City.

I obtained Bond's address at Hill House in Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia from the public phone directory, and while John Judge waited in the car, walked up to that apartment building next to the train station. 

When I told the door man-security guard I was visiting James Bond, he directed me to the elevator and said his apartment was on the 10th floor 1007. Ha, another coincidence.

I nocked on the door, my copy of his book in my hand, and when Mrs. Bond answered, I held it up and asked if Mr. Bond would sign my copy of his book. She invited me in, and called out, "Jimmy!, there's a young man here to see you."

Jimmy, I thought, was a real American and not the prim and proper English James.

Mr. Bond emerged from a back room wearing a tuxedo, much as his Hollywood namesake wore. They were going out that night to attend a charity ball, he explained, and said, "Let's see what you have here- an early first edition on which he enshrined, "To Bill Kelly, good birding, - James Bond."

At the Bond's invitation I returned a few more times, purchased and read Mrs Bond's books - "How 007 Realy Got His Name," "Far Afield in the Caribbean," and "To James Bond, With Love."