In this episode of Solving JFK , we continue our deep dive into organized crime’s potential connection to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Picking up where we left off, we examine the lives and activities of Johnny Roselli and Santos Trafficante—two of the most powerful mob figures with ties to both the CIA and anti-Castro operations. From Roselli’s role as a liaison between the CIA and the mafia, to Trafficante’s empire stretching from Tampa to Havana, the web of connections between organized crime, intelligence agencies, and political intrigue only grows more tangled.
You’ll hear about Roselli’s mysterious murder, Trafficante’s alleged involvement, and an explosive claim about Trafficante made by attorney Daniel Sheehan.
We’ve been looking at key mafia figures who were most likely to have been involved in a plot to kill President Kennedy. In the last episode, we talked about Jimmy Hoffa, Meyer Lansky, and Sam Giancana.
In this episode we pick up where we left off by studying Johnny Roselli and Santos Trafficante to try to gain an understanding of whether there is any truth to the idea that the mafia, or anyone affiliated with it, was involved in President Kennedy’s murder.
Johnny Roselli
Filippo Sacco was born in Esperia, Italy, and moved with his family to the United States, specifically, Boston, as a 6 year old. He began using the name John Roselli as an 18 year old in Chicago.1
Roselli eventually made his way out to Los Angeles, where he was arrested for bootlegging in 1924. After being an independent hoodlum for awhile, Roselli met Al Capone while in Chicago to watch a boxing match in 1927. Capone invited Roselli to a party at the Metropole hotel, where he hit it off with the Chicago Outfit. This led to Roselli working with the Los Angeles mafia to monitor Capone’s investments in LA.2
Roselli used his time in LA to forcibly take over off-shore gambling on a casino ship called Malfalcone. He also worked in the movie business, producing several gangster films. He cut his teeth working with the government as the de facto liaison between the mafia or any other criminals, and corrupt Los Angeles mayor, Frank Shaw.3
While Roselli was serving in the Army during World War II, his past came back to haunt him. Roselli was convicted of extortion in 1943, resulting in an undesirable discharge from the service, and a 3 year stint in prison.4 Years later, when Las Vegas was taking off in the 1950s, Johnny Roselli became the official representative of the Chicago and Los Angeles mafia in Sin City. He made sure that all of the various organized crime interests got their cut of the skim from legal gambling.5
Mafia Still Involved in CIA Plots
As we covered in Episode 80, when the CIA wanted the help of organized crime to kill Fidel Castro, Johnny Roselli was the go-between for CIA cut-out Robert Maheu and the mafia. According to what the CIA told the Church Committee, all cooperation between the CIA and the mafia, specifically, Johnny Roselli, ended in mid-February of 1963.6 But, Roselli was determined to stay involved, even though he was officially on the sidelines.
In an effort to get funding from Robert Kennedy, who had been handed the Cuba issue by his brother, Roselli put together a mafia backed Cuban exile group called the Junta of the Government of Cuba in Exile. CIA agent Bernard Barker, who was also working for Trafficante, helped to spread the word about the new organization among Cuban exiles. But, the group fizzled out in May of 1963 when it was discovered that its leader, Paulino Sierra, had been funded by Johnny Roselli.7
According to army officer, Bradley Ayers, Roselli was working with Cuban exiles long after Bill Harvey officially told him to let his Cuban contacts taper off. Ayers was sent to South Florida to help the CIA’s JM/WAVE station develop paramilitary capabilities. According to him, Johnny Roselli was right there in the middle of all of the Cuban exiles and CIA officers as they prepared various missions against Castro from the Florida Keys in the Summer and Fall of 1963.8
Ayers knew him as Colonel Roselli and often saw him coming and going from the office of David Morales, as well as driving around the JM/WAVE complex with Gordon Campbell and David Atlee Phillips.9 According to the CIA’s office of Public Affairs, Ayers was detailed to work with the CIA from May of 1963 until December of 1964. That means the earliest that Ayers could have seen Roselli would have been after Roselli was supposed to no longer be involved with the exiles.10
Roselli Murder
Years later, when the United States government attempted to deport Johnny Roselli, he asked the CIA for help. But, the agency refused to assist him. At that point, Roselli revealed the plot to kill Castro to columnist Jack Anderson. This led to Roselli being called to testify before the Church Committee, which was looking in to the actions and excesses of intelligence agencies.11
Not long after his June 1976 testimony to the Church Committee, and not long after the June 19th murder of Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli disappeared, on July 28, 1976. His dismembered body was found inside of a 55 gallon drum, which had risen to the surface as Roselli’s body decomposed in Miami’s Dumfoundling Bay.12
An October 24, 1978 Washington Post article suggests that Santos Trafficante may have been responsible for killing Roselli.13 The article says QUOTE “Twelve days before his death [Roselli] dined with Trafficante at the fashionable Landings restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is the custom in the mafia to wine and dine a wayward member before he is executed. Underworld informants told police that Roselli was lured aboard a private boat by his executioners. It is also the Mafia’s practice to give murder contracts to friends who the victim trusts.”14 Further, Santo Trafficante owned a home at 740 NE 155th Street in Miami, which is not far from Dumfoundling Bay, where Roselli’s body was found.
Roselli made it clear to Church Committee counsel, Micheal Madigan, that he was afraid for his safety and was taking a major risk by testifying. Madigan noted QUOTE “I cannot recall Roselli saying who he specifically was most afraid of, but he declined to testify about Giancana (until after Giancana’s death), refused to identify any of the Cubans who were involved in the assassination plots, and was reluctant to mention Santos Trafficante by name. In fact, I cannot recall Roselli ever mentioning Trafficante by name….It is also my recollection that Roselli’s demeanor was visibly affected whenever testimony or interview focused or attempted to focus on Santos Trafficante.”15
So, there is a fair amount of evidence suggesting the Trafficante may have killed Roselli, but it is not definitive. Trafficante is also the next mob boss we have on deck.
Santo Trafficante Background
First of all, this guy’s first name is pronounced with or without the S at the end all over the place. After waffling on this for awhile, until someone can persuade me otherwise, I am going with Santos Trafficante because that is what he told the House Select Committee on Assassinations his name was, as noted in the official transcript, from when he testified.16
Santos Trafficante, Jr. was born in Tampa to parents who had migrated from Sicily.17 His father, Santos Trafficante, Sr. was the mafia Don in Tampa from the early 1940s until his death from natural causes in 1954. The elder Trafficante showed his son the ropes of the criminal family business. Santos, Jr. helped to create and maintain an international narcotics trafficking network with the Lucchese crime family out of New York.18
In 1946, Trafficante, Sr. sent his son to Cuba to help operate a mafia owned casino. In 1950, both Santos Trafficante, Jr. and Sr. fled to Cuba to avoid being subpoenaed to testify before the Kefauver Committee on organized crime in the Senate. While they were gone two other mobsters, Jimmy Lumia and Charlie Wall, battled for control of Tampa. When the Trafficantes came back to Tampa, they had Lumia killed. Then, after Santos, Jr. survived an attempt on his life from Charlie Wall, the family eliminated Wall in short order, leaving the Trafficante crime family in charge of Tampa, once again.19
When he took over after his father’s death, Santos Jr. became one of the most powerful American mafia bosses, doing business with many other families, and extending his influence to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.20 While his reach was global, Trafficante was especially keen on Cuba, which he knew well.
Trafficante in Cuba
In 1955, Trafficante, Jr. moved to Cuba where he met Meyer Lansky. At that time, under the Fulgencio Batista regime, Trafficante had an ownership interest in and helped to operate the Sans Souci Cabaret and seven different Cuban casinos, which included the Havana Hilton.21 The reality of operating in Cuba meant that Trafficante needed to have a local criminal infrastructure. Just like mafia schemes anywhere else, there had to be a chain of command with soldiers on the front line doing the dirty work.
For example, according to what an aide to RFK told authors Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron, Cuban exile, CIA asset, and Watergate Burglar, Bernard Barker was working for Trafficante before, during, and after his time with the CIA.22 This is notable because Barker worked for E. Howard Hunt, and Barker is the person who Dallas police officer, Seymour Weitzman, identified as the Secret Service agent on the grassy knoll.23
As mentioned in Episode 80, CIA asset Tony Verona, was being bribed by Trafficante to ensure gambling, prostitution, and drug monopolies in Cuba if Castro could be ousted. Herminio Diaz Garcia worked for Tony Verona in Cuba. He would go on to become a bodyguard and hitman for Trafficante, while also participating in the CIA/Mafia plots, beginning in 1963.24
As we’ll soon see, Barker, Verona, and Diaz Garcia were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Cuban exiles working with the CIA who were aligned with Trafficante. There’s also an allegation, which very well may be true, that Jack Ruby met with Santos Trafficante in a Cuban prison. We’ll cover that claim when we revisit the life of Jack Ruby in just a few episodes.
What Trafficante Said Happened
As previously noted in Episode 68, FBI informant and Cuban Exile, Jose Aleman, says that he met with Santos Trafficante in September of 1962 and told him that he thought Kennedy would be re-elected, to which Trafficante responded QUOTE “you don’t understand me. Kennedy’s not going to make it to the election. He is going to get hit.”25
Trafficante appeared before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 and, while he admitted to meeting with Aleman about a Teamster loan proposal, he denied that he said anything about killing President Kennedy.26 However, years later, an associate at a law firm would go on to share everything the Tampa Don told the firm about the JFK Assassination.
Daniel Sheehan worked as an associate in the office of attorney F. Lee Bailey, whose name you may remember because he went on to be one of the lawyers for O.J. Simpson. The Harvard educated Sheehan also had an epic legal career, including working on The Pentagon Papers case, and suing the Reagan Bush Administration in a case that led to the discovery of the Iran/Contra scandal.
While Sheehan was working for F. Lee Bailey, he learned that the firm was on Index 4, a list of attorneys cleared by the CIA to defend agency-related clients on sensitive matters.27 Sheehan started working for Bailey in the Fall of 1972, a few months after the Watergate burglary.28 Sheehan was brought in to help defend Watergate burglar, James McCord. Right off the bat, Sheehan had some questions. And this is where Trafficante comes in. Here’s Sheehan talking about his representation of McCord on the Julian Dorey show:
Sheehan: If I’m being asked to participate in this, I need to find out what happened. What in the world are three of these Trafficante gunmen doing in the Watergate hotel? What does that got to do with anything? And I started investigating it and found out that Bailey was the attorney for Santos Trafficante and I said ‘Oh look, Trafficante obviously must know what his guys are doing in there. So lets find out what’s going on.’
So, we have Bad Andy Tooney, who was our chief investigator. He was the head of a thing called Moriarty & Associates. It’s got 40 class A licensed private investigators at our disposal at the Bailey Firm. He goes and sits down. Goes down to Tampa and over in Hank Gonzalez’s office, brings in Trafficante and brings him over to Hank Gonzalez’s house.
Dorey: This is when he’s the Don.
Sheehan: He’s the Don of Havana. He’s up in Tampa cause he’s fled back in January 1959 when Batista was overthrown. So he’s up there. They bring him over to Hank Gonzalez’s house. Bad Andy spends the weekend with him interviewing him in the guest house and gets the story about what’s happened here. And he ends up telling us what’s happened.
And what we discovered is that the reason in fact it had been Nixon himself that had personally ordered them to go into the Watergate hotel, it wasn’t just a brain fart or something on the part of the plumber’s unit. This was actually ordered by Nixon himself. Trafficante is very clear about this that it was ordered by Nixon himself. Because Nixon was terrified that Lawrence O’Brien had just become the new head of the Democratic National Committee that June and was going to be supervising the campaign against Nixon.
Turns out that Larry O’Brien, prior to being made head of the Democratic National Committee was the 20 year chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C. for Howard Hughes. And it turns out that Howard Hughes is the guy back in 1960 when Richard Nixon was the Vice President under Eisenhower and realized that he was going to be the nominee for the Republican Party for the presidential nomination in 1960 against John Kennedy, he reached out and contacted Howard Hughes, who was a secret consultant to the national security council of the Eisenhower/Nixon administration…..29
“…Nixon reached out to him on the secure phone from the 54-12 Committee, which is the section of the National Security Act of 1947 that ostensibly authorizes them to engage in other activities from time to time at the behest of the president. And they deem that as being the source of their authority to engage in covert operations, what they call kinetic action….So, Nixon reached out on the secure phone to talk to Howard Hughes asking him to set up a political assassination team to kill Fidel Castro.”30
So, according to Sheehan, Trafficante said it was Richard Nixon who ordered the CIA to work with the mafia. Sheehan’s story from Trafficante about the Maheu connected plots largely confirms everything we covered in Episode 80. As already noted, many of the Cubans who were working with the CIA against Castro were on Trafficante’s payroll. One major difference from Trafficante’s account is that he said Sheffield Edwards, the Director of Security for the CIA was present at the Fountainblue Hotel in Miami. The Church Committee report said that Jerry O’Connell, a lower official within the CIA, was the highest ranking government representative.31
The most significant addition to the official Church Committee story is that, after meeting with Sheffield Edwards, Trafficante, who had been operating in Cuba for decades at this point, was given the green light to create what he called the S-Force. Here’s Sheehan talking about how Trafficante put the team together:
Santos Trafficante then picks 15 guys that are his former gunmen from Havana, who have been recruited. He wants to make sure all the guys he recruits into this S-Force he called it, are people that are working with the Central Intelligence Agency now in a thing called Operation 40. Operation 40 was this covert operation that was being mounted out of five paramilitary bases that had been established all through the Southeastern United States: one on Swan Island, one on No Name Key, one in the everglades, and then two of them at Lake Ponchatrain over in Lousiana.
Anyway, and they’re all set up and they’ve got CIA liaison people functioning to them, but they’re made up of a lot of the anti-castro, pro-Batista, right wing Cuban organized crime guys that were working with Trafficante in all the different gambling casinos and houses of prostitution and heroin trafficking they had going through Havana under Batista. So, these guys are all operatives now working with the Central Intelligence Agency in a thing called Operation 40.
Come the election time, after setting all this up in June, they set up a scheme for financing the training of this S Force that they were taking a skim off the casinos, off the two major mob casinos. I think one was the Flamingo and one was the Sands. And they were skimming cash off. And they were putting them in these brand new expensive suitcases and putting them in the trunks of Cadillac automobiles and then driving them down from Las Vegas through New Orleans, where Marcello would do the audit on what the cash was that was coming off the skim. Then, they would pack them back up and take them to Miami and put them in the Miami National Bank of Meyer Lanksy. The bank down there. And what they would do is they would wire some of that money down to a bank account down in Banco International in Mexico City and they would put this cash into this bank account of lawyer by the name of Manuel Aggario.
And they put the money in there and that money was used to finance the training that was taking place of this triangular fire team base that was down in Oaxaca Mexico on the ranch of Clint Murchison, Jr.”32
Sheehan says that Trafficante flat out admitted helping to assemble the assassination team that killed President Kennedy, but Trafficante claims that he did not order the hit:
He said, look, I, Santos Trafficante, am the one who put together the assassination team that killed President Kennedy. But, I didn’t put it together to kill President Kennedy. I did it to kill Fidel Castro. I was first contacted in 1960, when Nixon was the Vice President under Eisenhower. Under Section 54-12 of the National Security Act, the office of the president could engage in covert operations. Nixon led the 54-12 committee of the national security counsel, which coordinates CIA covert operations under section 54-12 of the National Security Act of 1947…”33
So, what does all of this have to do with Watergate and Sheehan’s client, James McCord? The FBI found sequentially numbered hundred dollar bills in the pockets of all of the Watergate burglars. The bills were able to be traced back to the bank account of Manuel Aggario at the Banco International in Mexico City. According to Sheehan, the Watergate burglary was really about Nixon sending in his operatives to bug the phones and plant listening devices at the DNC headquarters because Nixon was worried that Howard Hughes’ old lobbyist, and the new DNC head, Larry O’Brien, knew that Nixon was the one who first reached out to Hughes to work with the Mafia, which, Trafficante says, led to the creation of the assassin team that killed President Kennedy. Nixon was apparently worried that O’Brien would use that against him in the campaign. Here’s Sheehan again:
4 “It turns out that the account at Banco Internationale in Mexico City of Manuel Aggarrio is the same account through which they passed the money that was being taken from the off the 3 casinos in vegas in 1960 and paid to the triangular fire team training base in Oaxaca, Mexico that was owned by Clint Murchison, Jr, where the assassination team was trained by Carl Jenkins, whom I’ve spoken with at length. This is where they were being trained. What it means is that if, in fact, that bank had been investigated by Mark Felt and found out that the money from the burglars in Watergate had come directly from the same account that paid for the assassination base down in Oaxaca, Mexico, that would’ve come out. And that’s what the problem was here.”34
This story that Sheehan lays out, as told to him by Trafficante, is one of intermingling between the mafia, the CIA, and Cuban exiles. There is much more to this story, especially the details around Nixon and the CIA, which we’ll revisit in the future.
We are putting a lot of faith in the word of one man for this story. But, Daniel Sheehan isn’t just some guy. He’s a bona fide legal legend and a man in the arena. I’m not saying that the case has been solved. But, we certainly have to consider Sheehan’s claims. We’ll keep what Sheehan said in mind, and revisit the details of Trafficante’s story as relayed by Sheehan, when we get to the Cuban Exiles.
NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We wrap up our study of mafia bosses with a look at Carlos Marcello, including alleged links between Marcello and Lee Harvey Oswald, and Marcello’s alleged jailhouse confession.
Automated transcript
Machine-generated from the audio and unedited, so names and spellings may be wrong. Tap a timestamp to play from that point.
Speaker 3We've been looking at key mafia figures who were most likely to have been involved in a plot to kill President Kennedy. In the last episode, we talked about Jimmy Hoffa, Meyer Lansky, and Sam Giancana. In this episode, we pick up where we left off by studying Johnny Roselli and Santos Traffacante, To try to gain an understanding of whether there's any truth to the idea that the Mafia or anyone affiliated with it was involved in President Kennedy's murder.
Speaker 2In Dallas, Texas, three shots required a President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting you. The flash, apparently official, as of its Kennedy, died at the top of the M.C.M.
Speaker 1Central, and then at the top of the M.C.M. The M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C.M.C. This is solving JFK.
Speaker 3I'm your host, Matt Crumpton. Felipo Sacco was born in Esperia, Italy, and moved with his family to the United States specifically Boston as a six-year-old. He began using the name John Roselli as an 18-year-old in Chicago when he was on the run from a narcotics charge in Boston. Rosselli eventually made his way out to Los Angeles, where he was arrested for bootlegging in 1924. After being an independent hoodlum for a while, Rosselli met Al Capone while he was in Chicago to watch a boxing match in 1927. Capone invited Rosselli to a party at the metro pole hotel, where he hit it off with the Chicago outfit. This led to Rosely working with the Los Angeles Mafia to monitor Al Capone's investments in LA. Rosely used his time-out west to forcibly take over offshore gambling on a casino ship called the Malfalcon. He also worked in the movie business, producing several gangster films. He cut his teeth working with the government as the de facto liaison between the mafia or any other criminals and corrupt Los Angeles mayor Frank Shaw.
Speaker 3Roselli's past came back to haunt him while he was serving in the army during World War II. He was convicted of extortion in 1943, resulting in an undesirable discharge from the service, and a three-year stent in prison. Years later, when Las Vegas was taking off in the 1950s, Johnny Roselli became the official representative of the Chicago and Los Angeles Mafia in Rosely made sure that all of the various organized crime interests got their cut of the skim from legal gambling. As we covered in episode 80, when the CIA wanted the help of organized crime to kill Fidel Castro, Johnny Roselli was the go-between for CIA cutout Robert Mayhew and the Mafia. According to what the CIA told the Church Committee, all cooperation between the CIA and the Mafia specifically Roselli ended in mid-February of 1963. Roseli was determined to stay involved, even though he was officially on the sidelines. In an effort to get funding from Robert Kennedy, who had been handed the Cuba issue by his brother, Roseli put together a Mafia-backed Cuban exile group called the Hunta of the Government of Cuba in exile.
Speaker 3CIA agent Bernard Barker, who was also working for Traffacante, helped to spread the word about the new organization among Cuban exiles. The group fizzled out in May of 1963 when it was discovered that its leader, Polino Sierra, had been funded by Johnny Ricelli. According to Army Officer Bradley Ayers, Roselli was working with Cuban exiles long after Bill Harvey officially told him that his Cuban contacts taper off. Ayers was sent to South Florida to help the CIA's J.M. wave station develop her military capabilities. According to Ayers, Roselli was right there in the middle of all of the Cuban exiles and the CIA officers as they prepared various missions against Castro from the Florida Keys in the summer and fall of 1963. Heirs knew him as Colonel Rosselli, and often saw him coming and going from the office of David Morales, as well as driving around the J.M. Wave Complex with Gordon Campbell and David Atley Phillips.
Speaker 3According to the CIA's Office of Public Affairs, airs was detailed to work with the CIA from May of 1963 until December of 1964. That means that the earliest that airs could have seen Rosalie would have been after Rosalie was supposed to no longer be involved with the exiles. Years later, when the United States government attempted to deport Roseli, he asked the CIA for help. The agency refused to assist him. At that point, Roseli revealed the plot to kill Castro, to columnist Jack Anderson. This led to Roselli being called to testify before the Church Committee, which, as we mentioned in previous episodes, was looking into the actions and accesses of intelligence agencies. Not long after his June 1976 testimony to the Church Committee, and not long after the June 19th murder of Sam G. and Kana, His dismembered body was found inside of a 55-gallon drum in Miami's dumb-foundling bay. As Roseli's body decomposed, the drum rose to the surface.
Speaker 3An October 24th, 1978 Washington Post article suggests that Santos Traffacante may have been responsible for killing Roselli. The article says, quote, 12 days before his death, Roselli died with Traffacante at the fashionable Lending's restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is the custom in the Mafia to wine and dine a wayward member before he is executed. Underworld informants told police that Roseli was lured aboard a private boat by his executioners. It is also the Mafia's practice to give murder contracts to friends who the victim trusts. Further, Santos Traficante owned a home at 740 Northeast 150 Fifth Street in Miami, which is not far from dumb-foundling Bay where Roselli's body was discovered. Roselli made it clear to the Church Committee Council Michael Madigan that he was afraid for his safety and he was taking a major risk by testifying. Madigan noted, quote, I cannot recall Rosalie saying who he specifically was most afraid of, but he declined to testify about Giancana until after Giancana's death, refused to identify any of the Cubans who were involved in the assassination plots, and was reluctant to mention Santos Traficante by name.
Speaker 3In fact, I cannot recall Rosalie ever mentioning Traficante by name. It is also my recollection that Roselli's demeanor was visibly affected whenever testimony or interview focused or attempted to focus on Santos Traficante. So there is some evidence suggesting that Traficante may have killed Roselli, but it's not definitive. Santos Traficante is also the next mob boss we have on deck. First of all, this guy's first name is pronounced with or without the S at the end all over the place. After waffling on this pronunciation for a while, until someone can persuade me otherwise, I'm going with Santos, Traficante, because that's what he told the House Select Committee on Assassinations, his name was, as noted in the official transcript from when he testified. Santos Traficonte Jr. was born in Tampa to parents who had migrated from Sicily. His father, Santos Traficonte Sr. was the Mafia Don in Tampa from the early 1940s until his death from natural causes in 1954.
Speaker 3The elder Traficonte showed his son the ropes of the criminal family business. Santos Jr. helped to create and maintain an international narcotics trafficking network with the Lukazy Crime Family out of New York. In 1946, Traficante Sr sent his son to Cuba to help operate Amafia-owned Casino. In 1950, both Santos Traficante Jr. and Sr, fled to Cuba to avoid being subpoenaed to testify before the Keyfobric Committee on Organized Crime in the Senate. While the Traficante's were gone, two other mobsters, Jimmy Lumia and Charlie Wall battled for control of Tampa. When the Traffa Contas returned to Tampa, they had Lumia killed. Then, after Charlie Wall tried to kill Santos Junior, the family eliminated Wall in short order, leaving the Traffa Conta crime family in charge of Tampa once again. When he took over after his father's death, Santos Junior became one of the most powerful mob bosses in America, doing business with many other families and extending his influence to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.
Speaker 3While his reach was global, Traficante was especially keen on Cuba, which he knew well. In 1955, Traficante Junior continued to spend a lot of time in Cuba, where he met Myolanski. At that time, under the Fulgencio Batista regime, Traficante had an ownership interest in and helped to operate the San Suci Cabaret and seven different Cuban casinos, which included the Havana Hilton. The reality of operating in Cuba meant that Traficante needed to have a local criminal infrastructure. Just like Mafia schemes anywhere else, there had to be a chain of command with soldiers on the front line doing the dirty work. According to what an AED to RFK told authors Tom Hartman and Lamar Waldron, Cuban exile, CIA asset, and Watergate Bergler Bernard Barker was working for Traficante before during and after his time with the CIA. This is notable because Barker worked for E. Howard Hunt, and Barker is the person who Dallas police officers see more white men identified as the secret service agent on the grassy null.
Speaker 3As mentioned in episode 80, CIA asset Tony Verona was being bribed by Traffa Conte to ensure gambling prostitution and drug monopolies in Cuba for the mafia, if Castro could be ousted. Her manyo Diaz Garcia worked for Tony Verona in Cuba. He would go on to become a bodyguard and hitman for Traffa Conte, while also participating in the CIA mafia plots, beginning in 1963. As will soon see! Barker, Verona, and Diaz Garcia were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Cuban exiles working with the CIA, who were also aligned with Santos Traficonte. On top of that, there's an allegation which very well may be true that Jack Ruby met with Traffa Conte in a Cuban prison. We'll cover that claim in depth when we revisit the life of Jack Ruby in just a few episodes. As previously noted in episode 68, FBI informant and Cuban exile Jose Alaman says that he met with Santos Traficante in September of 1962 and told him that he thought Kennedy would be re-elected to which Traficante responded, quote,
Speaker 3Traffa Conte appeared before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, and while he admitted to meeting with Alaman about a teamster loan proposal, he denied that he said anything about killing President Kennedy. However, years later, an associate at a connected law firm would go on to share everything the Tampa Dawn told the firm about the Daniel Sheen worked as an associate in the office of attorney F. Lee Bailey, whose name might ring a bell because he went on to be one of the attorneys for O.J. Simpson. The Harvard-educated Sheen also had an epic legal career, including working on the Pentagon paper's case, and suing the Reagan Bush administration in a case that led to the discovery While Xi'an was working for Fli Bayley, he learned that the firm was on index 4, a list of attorneys cleared by the CIA to defend agency-related clients on sensitive matters. Xi'an was brought in to help defend Watergate Bergler James McCord.
Speaker 3Right off the bat, Xi'an had some questions, and this is where Santos Traficante comes in. Here's she in talking about his representation of McCord on the Julian Doris Show.
Speaker 0If I'm being asked to participate in this, I need to find out what happened. What in the world are three of these Traffa County gunmen? doing in the Watergate Hotel. What does that got to do with anything? And I started investigating it and found out that Bailey was the attorney for Santos Traffa County. And so I said, oh, look, Traffa County. Obviously, must know what his guys are doing in there. So let's find out what's going on. So we have Bad Andy Tunney. who was our Chief Investigator that he was the head of a thing called Moriarty and Associates. It's got 40 class A license to private investigators that are at our disposal at the Bailey firm, right? And he goes and sits down and goes down to, Tampa over in Tampa brings in Trafford County and brings him over to Hank Gonzalez's house about Andy Spence that we can with him interviewing him in the guest house and gets the story about what's happened here and he ends up telling us that what's what's happened and what we
Speaker 0The reason, in fact, it had been Nixon himself that it personally ordered them to go into the war gate hotel. It wasn't just a brain fart or something on the part of the plumber's unit, that this was actually ordered by Nixon himself. He's telling, yes, this is Traficanti, it's being very clear about this, that this was ordered by Nixon himself, because Nixon was terrified. that the Larry O'Brien, Lawrence O'Brien, had just been made the head of the New Head of the Democratic National Committee that June. And it was going to be supervising the campaign against Nixon. And it turns out that Larry O'Brien prior to being made the head of the Democratic National Committee was the 20 year lobbyist chief lobbyist in Washington DC for Howard Hughes. Turns out that Howard Hughes is the guy back in 1960, when Richard Nixon was the vice president under Eisenhower and realized that he was going to be the nominee for the Republican Party for the presidential nomination in 1960 against John Kennedy.
Speaker 0He reached out and contacted Howard Hughes who was a secret consultant to the National Security Council of the Eisenhower Nixon administration. Nixon reached out to him on the secure phone from the 54-54-12 committee, which is the section of the National Security Act of 1947 that ostensibly authorizes them to engage in other activities from time to time at the past of the president. And they've deemed that as being the source of their authority to engage in covert operations with a kinetic. actually. And so that Nixon reached out on the secure phone to talk to Howard Hughes, asking him to set up a political assassination team to kill Fidel Castro in 1960. John, he's my president. Well, he's vice president.
Speaker 3So, according to Xi'an, Traficante said it was Richard Nixon who ordered the CIA to work with the mafia. Xi'an's story from Traficante about the Mayhew-connected plots, largely confirms everything we covered in episode 80. As already noted, many of the Cubans, who were working with the CIA against Castro, were on Traffacante's payroll. One major difference between the Church Committee account and what Traffacante says is that Traffacante includes Sheffield Edwards, the director of security for the CIA, as being present at the Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami. The church committee says that a lower-ranking CIA official, Gerry O'Connell, was the highest-ranking government representative. The most significant addition to the official church committee story is that after meeting with Sheffield Edwards, Traficante, who had been operating in Cuba for decades at this point, was given the green light to create what he called the S-force.
Speaker 3Here's she in talking about how Traffa Conte put the team together on the Julien Doris Show.
Speaker 0And in San Francisco Traffa Conte then picks. 15 guys that are his former gunman from Havana who have been recruited. He must make sure that all the guys that he recruits into this S-force he's called is that are people that are working with a central intelligence agency now in a thing called Operation 40. Operation 40 was this covert operation that was being mounted out of five paramilitary bases that have been established all through the south Eastern United States, one on Swan Island, one on the name key, one in the Everglades, and then two of them at like Ponte Train over Louisiana. Yep. Anyway, and they're all set up, and they've got CIA liaison people functioning to them, but they're made up of a lot of the anti-Castro pro-Batista right wing Cuban organized crime guys. that we're working with Traficanti and in all the different gambling casinos and houses of prostitution and heroin trafficking, they had going through Hamana under Batista.
Speaker 0And so that these guys are all operatives now, working with the Central Intelligence Agency and the thing called Operation 40. And then it comes the election time. after the setting all this up in June, they set up a scheme for financing the training of the ZS force that they were taking a skim off the casinos off the two major mob casinos. I think one is the flamingo on one of the stands. And they were skimming cash off in them, and they were putting them in these brand new suit-expensive suitcases, and putting them in the trunk of Cadillac automobiles, and then driving them down from Las Vegas through New Orleans for Marcelo, would do the audit on what the cash was that was coming off to skim, and then they would pack them back up and The bank down there and then what they would do is they would wire some of that money down to a bank account down in the Banco International and Mexico City Then they would put this cash into this bank account of a lawyer of the name of a agario his name is
Speaker 0Manuel Agario and they put the money in there and that money was used to finance the training That was taking place of this triangular fire team base. There was down in Wilhaka, Mexico on the ranch of Clint, Merchison, Jr.
Speaker 3She and says that Traffa Conte flat out admitted helping to assemble the assassination team that ended up killing President Kennedy. But Traffa Conte said that he's not the one who ordered the hit.
Speaker 0So look, I, Santos Traffa Conte, am the one that put together the assassination team that killed President Kennedy. said, but I didn't put it together to kill President Kennedy. I put it together to kill Fidel Castro. And we did this back in late June. I was first contacted. He said of 1960. In 1960, Richard Nixon was the vice president under Eisenhower. And in that capacity, he chaired the 54-12 committee of the National Security Council, which is the council that coordinates covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency under section 54-12 of the National Security
Speaker 3So what does all of this have to do with Watergate and she and client James McCord? The FBI found sequentially numbered $100 bills in the pockets of all of the Watergate burglars. The bills were then traced back to the bank account of Manuel Agario at the Banco International in Mexico City. According to Xi'an, the watergate burglary was really about Nixon sending in his operatives to bug the phones and plant listening devices at the DNC headquarters because Nixon was worried that Howard Hughes-old lobbyist who was the new head of the DNC, Larry O'Brien knew that Nixon was the one who first reached out to Hughes to work with the mafia, which Traficante says, led to the creation of the assassin team that killed President Kennedy. Nixon was apparently worried that O'Brien would use that information against him in the 1972 campaign. Here's she and again.
Speaker 0The account down in the Banco International in Mexico City of the Manuologario is the same account through which they passed the money that was being taken from the skim off the three casinos in Vegas back in 1960 and paid down to the triangular fire team training based on a Mohawk of Mexico that was owned by Clint Merchist and Junior, where the assassination team was trained by Carl Jenkins. whom I've spoken with at length. And this is where they were being trained. And what it means is that if, in fact, that bank had been investigated by Mark Felt and found out that the money for the burglars in Watergate had come directly from the same account that had been used to pay the assassination base. It was being trained down in Mohawk, Mexico. All that would have come out. uh, and uh, and it turns out that that's what the problem was here.
Speaker 3The story that Daniel Sheen lays out as told to him by Santos Traficante is one of intermingling between the mafia, the CIA, and Cuban excels. There is much more to this story, especially the details around Nixon and the CIA, which will revisit in the future. We're putting a lot of faith in the word of one man if we believe this story, but Daniel Shean isn't just some guy. He's a bona fide legal legend and a man in the arena. I'm not saying that the case has been solved, but we certainly have to consider Shean's claims. We'll keep what she and set in mind and revisit the details of Traficante's story as relayed by she-in when we get to the Cuban exiles. Next time on Solving JFK, we wrap up our study of Mafia bosses with a look at Carlos Marcello, including alleged links between Marcello and Lee Harvey Oswald, and Marcello's alleged If you heard anything that you believe is out of context, or if you have additional information to offer, you can let us know at solving JFK podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker 3Please provide citations to the record for any fact that you're relying on. For transcripts, sources, and official podcast merchandise, visit solvingjfkpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. Visit solvingjfkpodcast.com for more information.
