Part 17 (Ep 79-83) with Louis Ferrante

Speaker 1We've just wrapped up a five-part series on the Mafia and of course bonding two-part series on Jack Ruby. Today we're focused on the Mafia episodes and we'll be diving in to Ruby next week. But this is the 17th edition of Recap and Rebuttals and we're going to go deep on the five Mafia episodes just to try to get an understanding of the role of organized crime and the assassination of President Kennedy. We have a very special guest with us today. author, speaker, television producer, organized crime expert and former associate of the Gambino crime family, Lewis Farante, coming up next on solving JFK.

Speaker 3In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. The final, apparently official, this is kind of the dive and come to the end. The man lay a formerly genre, the assassination question. I guess the hat of the president is me, uncle. It's also a fact in a phone. I was he a member of a conspiracy. The mission answers, active, alone, alone, alone, alone, alone, alone.

UNKNOWNI'm a movie man. I'm a movie man.

Speaker 1We're joined today by Lou Ferante, an internationally best-selling author, television producer, and organized crime expert. Lou acquired that expertise up close and personal as an associate of Mafia Boss John Gotti. When Lou faced charges for heist and hijackings, he did not inform on any of his former Gambino crime family associates. Lou used his time in prison to soak up as many books as he could and to teach himself the law, and he was even able to successfully appeal one of his convictions as his own attorney. Pretty awesome. Upon his release from prison, Lou began a prolific career as an author, pending some outstanding books on organized crime, including a three-volume history of the unlocked the life and crimes of a mafia insider and mob rules with the mafia can teach the legitimate business man. As I was trying to find a suitable guess for the recap and rebuttals for the mafia episodes, lose name kept coming up and I reached out and he's willing to come on the show today and he's the perfect guest for this episode.

Speaker 1So, Lou Ferante, welcome to Solving JFK, it's an honor to have you on.

Speaker 0Oh, thanks, Matt. I'm happy to be here. Just a quick correction. I was close with Peter Gotti, who was John's brother. I was in and out of his house and his nephew's house. And also John's nephew's richie Joey. So, just wanted to make sure that's clear. Yeah, but that said, everything else. Thank you. I'm flattered. yeah and it's it's almost like you can't believe the things that are on Wikipedia or the internet sometimes you know yeah well i mean i was you know i was around the whole gody family but just specifically close with john's you know john's family john's brother and his and his nephew i guess before we get into the JFK assassination specifics on on the mafia you know

Speaker 1out of the gate you have the perspective of both someone who's studied the history, but also someone who's lived the life. What was the experience like of writing the series on the history of the American Mafia given your actual life experience? And how much of it, you know, of you writing these Mafia books, where things that you're researching versus things that just sort of

Speaker 0Uh-huh. It's a great question. Um, when I taught myself how to write in prison, I wanted to write anything but true crime. So I desperately tried to break into other genres. And whenever I would approach a publisher or an agent, they always said, you need to tell us true crime because of your life. I've been a criminal since I'm 13, uh, you know, maybe even 12, and till I am 33, when I came home from prison, 13 to 33, 20 years, the largest chunk of my life, my entire adult life, I'm a criminal. So they want you to keep pressing you right about crime. And I didn't want to, but I have to admit that they are right to the extent that this is what I know. And when I started to research the mob, I realized that my life experiences would come to the forefront so many times where I could see if something's not right. If I read something so-and-so, Albert Anastasia and Vito Genervais were arguing about such and such, if it makes sense to me, no bell rings in my head, nothing goes off, no, but if I smell something that's off,

Speaker 0I would immediately sense it because of my past. So that sort of, I was indicted three times. So obviously, I studied the law, I've been in court rooms for years. So I know a lot of the different aspects around the criminal world, too. And on this side of my life, I've befriended law enforcement offices, obviously retired FBI agents. So I've kind of learned that side of the spectrum as well. So I can, I will admit that the publishes in the agents who pushed me constantly to write true crime. had it right. It is what I know. It's just something that I wanted to get away from. You come on from the penitentiary after so many years and you just want to wash that stuff off, you would never look back and you know, I'm constantly forced to look back, but it is what I know. So that said, the JFK thing was it was an experience of its own. So when I started writing the I really didn't know I was going to dedicate so much time and research to JFK.

Speaker 0But I'm reading, and I see that the mob was involved. Not these old conspiracies, obviously there were members of the government who were involved. I believe rogue members of the CIA, I also believe rogue members of the Secret Service, and I believe Jayad Gouva, Look the other way. Although he was indirectly involved, I believe a lot of information passed across his desk prior to the assassination that he ignored for want of something to happen to Kennedy who is becoming more and more of an enemy to him. I did also see that the mafia played a law drill in the conspiracy on the ground and I could not then once you see that it's hard to say, oh well, I'm just going to leave that out and skip over it, you're putting a president in the oval office and you're taking him out. This is a big deal. And that's a big deal in Mafia history and it overlaps with American history. And that was just something that was too uh, I guess like enticing, you know, for anybody, especially me as a researcher and historian, to pass up.

Speaker 0So I dove into it and I never realized how many rabbit holes I would be going down. for years, you know, the trilogy in its entirety will have taken me over 10 years once the third volume is out, volumes one and two are already published, they're doing well, thank God, volume three will be out next year and it'll have taken me over 10 years by time it's out. A large chunk of that was me diving deeper and deeper into the Kennedy assassination because the literature on it is just endless and the documents that have been exposed over the years to through witnesses, who saw, seen, heard, it's incredible. So that sort of, yeah, I brought everything to bear and pushed it all into these books and especially the JFK event.

Speaker 1Yeah, I really can forge our reading that. So let's go ahead and jump into Zooming out here. This is a recap in our bottles episode. So I'm not going to literally restate everything we covered over what, you know, Two and a half hours of content three hours of content, but if you're looking if you're someone watching this wondering where am I getting this from The transcripts and the citations are all on the website solving JFK podcast.com We're just gonna touch on some of the the big picture Things we covered and then I'd love to get your thoughts on these things as we go.

Speaker 0Yeah, man on that note I should add to if anyone reads the second volume of my my bulk out of trilogy, which is subtitled to clash of Titans The reference notes are on the back, so my theories are based directly on evidence, and I cite that evidence in the back of the book. So anybody who's really interested in digging deep into the JFK assassination, the references are there. You can draw your own conclusions. If you agree with me, great. If you have a diverse at certain points, but the references are there just as you say.

Speaker 1Yeah, and I'll just to let the audience know as well in in watching the I haven't read your book yet, although I'm going to order both of them as soon as we're done with this interview here. But in in listening to you talk, everything you're saying confirms and overlaps with what we've covered in the podcast, so you're really not, I mean, what inference you ultimately draw sort of all these some things are up for debate, but like the substantive facts that you've laid out are all consistent with what we've covered. So that's one thing every now and then you'll get people who are just kind of like all over the place on things, but I do appreciate that you're committed to citations and objective truth. So that's good. The history of the American mafia, that goes way, way, way, way, way back, we're going to zoom forward into the future for our purposes to 1957 and the Appalachian raid. So obviously this is post, so you had prohibition mafia got huge.

Speaker 1That's a whole sub-the conversation, and then a good point that I heard you make in the podcast is people's perspective on the mob kind of changed during prohibition because they were like, hey, these are the guys that are right in the speak easy giving us booze like they're what's wrong with them, they're fine, you know what I mean, so, but anyway, uh, So as the mafia grew, they became more sophisticated, and eventually, and began to work together with different families, and this led to the 1950s to a meeting in 1957 in Appalachian, New York. There was a suspicious New York state police sergeant who then broke up this meeting and it turns out to be a meeting of major mafia bosses from across the country. And then that led to the FBI really ramping up enforcement and coincided with the McLellan Committee, which as we as we as is relevant to the Kennedy assassination, this is where, you know, John's a senator on the committee, but Bobby's chief council on he's the Bulldog and the whole point of the committee is is to pursue rackets and labor racketeering basically.

Speaker 1Bobby's just 31 years old this time. He gave 8,000 witness subpoenas and had 253 active investigations during a Senate committee. Then he wrote this book, The Enemy Within, calling The Mafia The Enemy Within. Of course, when he became Attorney General, later he made a list of 80 bosses and Mafia figures to investigate and pursued some more aggressively than others. So I say all that to say, the framing of the Kennedy administration's relationship with The Mafia, at large, not specific bosses, you know, RFK came in a little hot out of the gate and he always was. So they kind of, you know, with all the election in 1960 here in just a second, but they kind of should have known what to expect from Bobby given his role in the McClulling Committee. Your thoughts on that?

Speaker 0They did know what to expect, but they were persuaded by a couple of different people and for a couple of different reasons that the Kennedys would eventually get into the overall office and refrain from their pursuit of the mob. And the reason why they believe that is because if you go back throughout the history and I cover this in books one and two, They originally had him coming after them with everything he had in New York, putting away everybody he could go on after the mob that was his that was his claim to fame and it got him to the height of someone who became the governor of New York and ran against one of the most popular presidents in the history of his country. He refrain from chasing the mob. He gave Luciano who had been convicted by Dewey. He gave him amnesty and deported him. So he was a lot easier on the mob. And then he even tried to sort of like give them a wink and he was accused of taking campaign contributions from them later on.

Speaker 0So he made a name for himself, whether that was true and not we don't know, but he was accused of it. He made a name from self and moved on, then you have Senator Estis Kifalva, who also did the same during the Kifalva committee, he ran around the country, he went after all these mobs, does he hated them, then he ran for the Democratic nomination for president, and he forgot about the mob. He used them as a stepping stone, so the mob was convinced by Frank Sinatra and others, including Joe Kennedy, who had business dealings with mafia members who I lay out in the book, Through testimony people who dealt with him and this testimony didn't doesn't just come from mobsters who were shooting it out going Oh, yeah, I knew Joe Kennedy this comes from people who were around the Kennedy so we're on that side of the law on the good side Saying yeah, Joe knew the mob Somebody jack Kennedy had appointed judge

Speaker 0said, yeah, of course you knew the mob. These are just a judge. This is a federal judge that Kennedy appointed who's saying joke Kennedy knew the mob and did business with the mob. So he went to them joke Kennedy did and Frank Sinatra and maybe others as well. And they convinced the mob, hey, look. I know Bobby was a real, you know, pain in the behind during the McClellan committee hearings, but once Jack gets in the office. We're done. We want the White House. We're going to move on. We've got civil rights problems in this country. We've got a cold war. We've got nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. We've got bigger fish to fry. We're not going to bother with the mob. We're going to move on. So the mob was convinced that they were going to have at least four, if not eight, easy years under the Kennedy's. And they already had Hoover sort of kind of sort of like looking which I go deep into, in volumes one and two, I explain, in my opinion, based on evidence, why Hoover looked the other way.

Speaker 0And it's not what a lot of people have heard. There have been rumours that the mob had in pictures of him cross-dressing. The mob had compromising pictures of him with Clyde Tolson, his assistant director, and they were both alleged to be homosexuals. All of that may or may not have been true, I believe it was Ruma and I believe there were other reasons and I point out why Hoover would have looked the other way. And it goes much deeper than a picture of Kova possibly drag queening. Again, I would urge your listeners to read the books, you'll see them there, but getting back to the Kennedy's, the mob was convinced that the Kennedy's were going to look the other way, and they had every reason to put them in office. Having said that, most of the mob signed on and began to funnel campaign contributions into the Kennedy campaign, which Bobby was the head of the campaign by the way, for Jack's run, for President.

Speaker 0And they were in desperate need of funding the And they needed that funding to keep coming, even in Illinois, where Chicago ran the state, they promised to deliver the state, Chicago mob did. So there were bosses, however, even though the Chicago mob signed on and the New York mob signed on, there were bosses like Carlos Marcelo from Louisiana and Santa O'Chapa County from Florida. We said, I don't believe that. I'm not buying into that, Kennedy's going to be nice crap. We're not friends with him, he's not friends with us. We're going for Nixon. And they pushed money toward Nixon. And this is interesting, and I point this out on the book. In the book, when Bobby decided, when Bobby got in, when Jack got into the oval office, and Bobby was appointed attorney general, when he drew up this hit list of mobsters to go after, he had a special hatred for two mobsters, Marcelo and Traffa Conte, and it just happened to be the two that did not back as brother.

Speaker 0And Bobby was known, known for holding grudges and looking to destroy anybody, including Lyndon Johnson, who during the Democratic primary campaign, was nasty with the Kennedy's, Bobby never let Johnson even as Vice President lived that down. and I go into deep into that in the book as well. But this is something that the mob did believe for the most part that the Kennedys would back off, however, traffic hunting in Marcelo, who were also very close with Jimmy Hoffa, those three. Hoffa, traffic hunting, and Marcelo, never believed for a moment that the Kennedys would not keep coming after them, specifically Bobby.

Speaker 1Yeah, I think that that pretty well sums up the 1960 election. That was the question I was going to ask you. Those those bosses who did not support Kennedy, who were they. There you go. Marcelo Traficante, throw Jimmy Hoffman for good measure. Let's let's move on to, I want to talk a little Robert Mayhew. A mafia plot, so if we can. kind of the approach that I took towards this was to look at what's the official story behind it like what there is in official story on Guy mafia plots in the form of the church committee report. So I looked at that and then I looked at witness testimony as well in particular a guy named Bradley Ayers. He heard of this guy, Bradley Ayers. He wrote a book, but he was in the military, and he was basically stationed at J.M. Wave as a paramilitary trainer to this J.M. Wave. And he lays out how Roselli is down there at the camp more than a year after the church committee says everything's totally wrapped up.

Speaker 1So anyway, but I just want to touch on a few of those points here real quick in the spirit of recapping. So Robert Mayhew, he's recruited out of law school to work as an FBI counter intelligence officer in Europe during World War II. When he came back, he opened a private detective firm with the CIAs, one of his primary clients. Mayhew then became a CIA cutout where the agency couldn't be involved. They had plausible deniability in each respective project. The mission impossible TV show was based on Mayhew. So that's pretty cool. billionaire, military, industrialist, Howard Hughes, also worked with Mayhew as his right hand man. And Mayhew was huge right hand man, starting in 1955. And he was brought in to help the CIA connect method he used. And now the official story is that the CIA, uh, it was the CIA who came up with the idea for Mayhew to reach out to Ricelli and then Mayhew was contacted by this guy James O'Connell of the CIA who happened already be close friends with, uh, Mayhew and he even knew Ricelli because he had, uh, had dinner with Mayhew and Ricelli at Mayhew's house before.

Speaker 1So, But according to JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger, may you said that Nixon was the one who was pushing the CIA to work with the mafia and all this stuff really came from Nixon. I know that's kind of a nuanced question. But do you think that, what did you come across in terms of, you know, the thing that got the CIA mafia plots started? Was it an internal decision in the CIA or was it Nixon reaching out to Howard Hughes?

Speaker 0So it's quite possible that Nixon had a hand in it now. I'll explain why. I did not have enough evidence to state that Nixon was the guy, the motivator behind it in the book. I have to be very careful as an historian to put what I can factually put down on paper as best I can. And then draw my own conclusions from the facts, obviously. But I could not find enough evidence that Nixon was the one who sort of motivated the whole thing into existence. However, however, It was very possible because Nixon was somebody who went down to Cuba a lot and had friends go down to Cuba a lot. Friends of their friends of his who would big campaign contribute to his campaigns will constantly incubate when the mob ran Havana. So there was a friend that got taken for a ride in one of the casinos in Havana. He got back to the states and called Nixon and said, Nixon, you got to get my money back. These guys hustled me and Nixon got on the phone and said, give this guy back his money.

Speaker 0You can't do that. And then so there's, you know, a Nixon was obviously we know later on from Watergate that he may have had something to do with the Cuban exiles who were working with the CIA. That came out. Also Nixon, when the Cuban exiles would be in train by the CIA, for the Bay of Pigs invasion were also aware that Nixon was supposed to take over for Eisenhower, they believe Nixon would be elected president after Eisenhower, they never saw Kennedy coming. So they figured, well, Nixon will be easy, he'll go in after Eisenhower, and he'll take over the whole thing with the CIA, and the CIA at that point is working with the mob to kill Castro. So Nixon would be a prize to that. It's very, very possible. However, I was able to, you know, the evidence that I have is mayu is approached. The CIA decides that it's, hey, the mob kills. They must want to kill this Castro. They lost the vanna.

Speaker 0We let's approach somebody. So they started to put fuel is out. They started to go to different people and they eventually approached mayu. And mayu had an experience when he went to Las Vegas once. He was there to serve a subpoena to a big shot in Las Vegas, and nobody was giving him a room, because they all knew where I used down there. They're like, yeah, everybody's all the rooms that packed up, beat it, bum. You know, nobody wants to give up the guy. The mob runs Vegas at the time. So may you then get told by somebody else, hey, give this guy Johnny Reseli a call. He'll help you out. So he calls Reseli and Reseli says no problem. I'll put you in a bungalow, and at phone rings, He's got everything calmed through the hotel. They roll out the red carpet from. He rips up the subpoena. Says I'm not even going to serve it. I'm glad I met Johnny Roselli. Johnny Roselli's like the ambassador to Vegas, right?

Speaker 0So, Roselli then, when Mayu is approached, he says, you know, I'm French, French, and Roselli, and he's a mob guy, and you're never going to believe he's a mob guy, because he's so low-key. And so he's not like, uh, about a being, about a banning, let's kill this guy. Let's wrap a garage around his neck and chop him up in pieces. There are guys like that in the mob, but they're also, the big earners in the big move is usually low key guys. So he says, look, you can meet him and I'll show you this guy. And they couldn't even believe when the agents went to a clam bacon may use Backyard that they couldn't believe disguised Johnny Resellys, a real gangster, to give you another added example of how he was so hard to believe to be a gangster, and he had been killing people since he's a teenager, by the way. The guy was treacherous, but he knew how to conduct himself around very big people. He knew how to run in different circles.

Speaker 0There was a Hollywood producer who rosellys to straighten out Union beef for. And that producer said, look, I got a guy playing of gang stuff. Can he hang out with you one night? So he could kind of like get the move and mannerisms from you and pick up stuff. I really love from to see what a real gangster's like. So the guy resettly sure, let's go to a ball game. So they go to a ball game. The guy calls up the movie producer and he says, I didn't get shit from this guy, he goes, what do you mean? He goes, I learn more from watching TV, he goes, this guy in a gangster, he goes, he picked up the tab, he's as sweet as could be, holds the door for me, he says he's polite, he gives me the seed, he gives me, he goes, this guy's the nicest guy ever mad, he goes, I'm playing a gangster, he goes, this guy's got his, there was nothing about him, that was gangster. So that's how the CIA saw him as well.

Speaker 0So they make this sort of they draw him in, and in first, Reselli thought he's being set up. He's like the government wants to work with me. You guys are trying to put me up, put me away for the rest of my life at all times. Now you want me to work with you and may you convince us a meditrile and then may you because may you answer to the Chicago mob run by Sam Gene Kana. So may who's got to clear it? That's how the mob works. You got to clear it with your boss. You can't just go and do something and say, if you work for a big company, you can't stop cutting deals, right? You work for Microsoft. You can't just cut a deal with Dell tomorrow. You got to take it up the ladder, right? Same thing with Rosalie. He's got to clear it with Gene Connor. He goes to Gene Connor, Gene Connor says, yeah, I'll get involved. That's son of a bitch Castro. We'd love to kill him. So now Jean-Conna and Roselia involved Jean-Conna's pulled in because he's the boss, Roselia's boss.

Speaker 0But then Jean-Conna says there's territorial places and because J.M. Wave and all the Cuban excels are in Miami. They got to clear it now with Santor Traficante. So Jean-Conna then reaches out to Traficante, one boss reaching out to another, and he says, listen. We were looking to clip Castro. We need your help because we got to work with the CIA and exiles down in Miami. And that's where the J.M. Wave station is. And he says, sure, no problem. He says, I'm in on it, too. Now, traffic content is involved in the plot. His dedication to the plot has always been suspect. And it was eventually suspect by none other than Bill Harvey, William Harvey. keep that in mind because all of the plots against Castro failed and it later came out that they failed because Castro trafficante may have been a double agent. Why would be traffic and I go through this, I go through this meticulously in my book and I have all the notes and all the testimony pointing to trafficante as a double agent.

Speaker 0Why would trafficante be a double agent? Well, The mob made big money here. America was the land at a home, landed a free, home at a brave. They loved it. They did great here. The mob. They had no reason to despise the American government or the American way of life. Why would he be a double agent for Castro? Well, he's in Miami. After Castro takes a van. He's in the heat moves his headquarters from Tampa to Miami, where all the Cubans are coming, and there's a huge flow of drugs coming through a Cuban pipeline into Miami and traffic content is running all those drugs because Castro needed to prop up his horrible economy. and keep that drug pipeline open. So he's the guy on this end running all that drugs. He doesn't want to see Castro die. Castro dies that Cuban pipeline that's being kept open by Castro make collapse. If the American government gets back into Havana and closes down the pipeline.

Speaker 0So that's the reason why traffic content may have been a double agent and may have gotten in the way of all those plots from succeeding. But that's the whole story in itself.

Speaker 1Well, no, that goes on to that sort of the next point is they put the team together and they're trying to kill Castro and so they start to, you know, pursue different plots to kill him while we're going to give poison pills and someone's going to slip it into, you know, his food or his drink, but then that person got fired. Oh, we're going to give poison pills and we're going to put it in his meal at this restaurant he always goes to but then he stopped going to the restaurant and then you find out that wait a minute. the people that the CIA reselli was was bringing in. Really worked for Traficante in Cuba because if you're running the casinos, you've got to have people. You've got to have front line people, right? So that's very interesting. You're your point that maybe he was playing both sides You know, I don't, that's not to say that Traffa Conte himself is a little, we'll get to that later.

Speaker 1But the Traffa Conte necessarily turned to the plot away from Castro to Kennedy. But he might have tried to make sure that it didn't actually happen against.

Speaker 0Well, at one point, at one point or another, there is a lot of evidence that Traffa Conte did participate in the plot against Kennedy. At the very least, he was aware of the plot before time. And that goes to what I, as I'm sure you know, and your viewers would even know. Jose Alaman. said to him, he was Olden Haliman was the distinguished child of rather the child of a distinguished part of Cuba's previous government, fled to America. He had tons of assets and money in America in the United States. In Miami specifically, he worked hand in hand with Traficante, development deals, Traficante would help him get teams to the loans, to build hotels, So they were hand in hand, they were very close. But Alamáhm was also an FBI and CIA informant. So Traficante says to him, look, Kennedy's going to buy it when he comes down south. He's dead. And he tells him that. And Traficante immediately reports us to his FBI handlers, who were later interviewed and admitted that he told them beforehand.

Speaker 0So there's no question that Traficante at the very least knew he would be killed at the very least.

Speaker 1You're saying Traveccante told the FBI, so Alamant told Jose Alamant.

Speaker 0And then Alamant left Traveccante. So the day they meet at the Scott Bryan hotel, I think it was for lunch and they could develop, they're discussing a development deal for a big building project. That Traveccante is helping Alamant acquire through a team's suspension fun loan. In the course of that, they mention Kennedy because Bobby Kennedy is up trafficante's ass as well as Marcelo's ass, which was very close friends with trafficante. So while Almond brings them up and he in response, trafficante says, you know, these, this Bobby is trampling on the rights of US citizens left and right, including ours. And it's okay though, because Jack's going to be removed from off the soon enough. He's going to be out. He's buying it when he comes down south. So Almond asks, what do you mean he's buying it? He goes, he's getting killed, he's getting whacked, done. Later, many years later, when Alaman is called before a committee, he changes that too.

Speaker 0Well, he meant he was going to get hit by a lot of Republican votes. He didn't mean he was going to get hit by a rifle. And after that testimony, immediately after that testimony, he is questioned by staffers. who he told, I had no choice but to say that. I'm scared to death for my life. Try to conflate what killed me. Are you kidding me? This came out now. I'm done. And sure enough, he killed himself that can the mob was going to kill him. So all of that, again, I detailed this extremely well in the book. I urge your listeners to read the book, Clash of Titans, the Bogotatology, Clash of Titans is the second volume. If you love Mafia history, read them all. If you just love the Kennedy stuff, Read the second volume most of it's in there. There is other mafia history in there You could skip over the pages if you want but the Kennedy stuff is really like was my passion I would have loved to even publish a book alone about Kennedy But because it was so interesting but traffic on they knew prior to the assassination that it was going to happen And you usually don't know that unless someone tells you who's on the inside if not you yourself is doing it

Speaker 1Yeah, sure. Yeah. And so just back to the CIA, make you. That's all that. So basically nothing really happens. And maybe that was because Traffa Conte was trying to make sure nothing happened to Castro.

Speaker 0Ah, what Conte had said to his attorney years later, you know, they kept giving me these pills and I flushed them down to toilet. You have no interest in killing Castro. He's got a pipeline making him a million dollars a month.

Speaker 1you know I mean what the hell does he need to kill Castro for and blow that great that's a great insight for sure yeah but so so the here's a question I have sort of the tension between the official story and it's other guys account that's got Bradley airs that I had mentioned so you know the official story is in that in April of 62 Bill Harvey takes over And then by February of 63, he shuts the whole operation down, tells Rocelli that it's over taper off your communications. By the way, they never told the Cuban excels that the $150,000 reward for killing Castro was gone. They didn't lay that information. But anyway, what's interesting is this guy, Ayers, who the CIA issued a press release, saying yes, he did work for us, he's lying, but he did work for us and he was physically present. But he kind of lays out that Rosely was down at the training camps, you know, on in the Florida Keys and and and WAVE station as well.

Speaker 1And was referred to as Colonel Rosely. Imagine. And and so I mean, To me, my whole thing is, look, the JFK assassination is gonna bring out some crazy people. There will be crazy people that come forth that are just totally lying. That's not what it is.

Speaker 0As is telling the truth on that note, because there was other evidence that after, so following the Bay of Pigs, we have the missile crisis. And during the missile crisis, the CIA is told to stand down while Kennedy figures out if he's gonna quarantine the island or attack. He's got it. He got two choices sending the Marines or quarantine the island and turn away also via chips and subs. While Kennedy is contemplating that crucial decision as we sit on the brink of war, of nuclear war possibly, and I have to give credit, you know, I look, I'm against Kennedy's decision. I would have told him to go in. I would have told them send them the Marines. This is your chance, just as the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe it to be. But there's a 1% chance that Kennedy, it all rests on Kennedy, too. And you have to give him credit. There's a 1% chance that it's not going to... be resolved after the Marines attacked and the Soviets will launch a missile and then you've got a nuclear holocaust on your hands.

Speaker 0So to be fair to Kennedy, although I think it was the wrong decision and I would have urged him if I was in the cabinet to say I would have said send the Marines. Let's go. They have no right to put missiles right off the border, right outside Florida, 90 miles off, you know, the coast of Florida. However, Kennedy felt like if there's one chance in a million, no, these guys launched this crackpot and Russia and the sort of this, you know, cruise shaft launches the missiles. What do I do? And who could take that away from Kennedy? Who we to question them? You know, I mean, he's got the world, the fate of the world in his hands. So that said, the CIA is told to stand down as Kennedy makes this decision. That's that. I understand it down and he keeps sending these sabotage raids into Cuba and Reselli was supposedly ponder on. Later on. Rosely, I mean, a Harvey and Bobby go out each other's drugs.

Speaker 0Bobby says you were told to stand down. You're supposed to listen on the attorney general, how dare you? My brother's the president, et cetera. Harvey says, go after yourself. If it wasn't for you and the idiot, treacherous brother, you two more ons. We wouldn't even be in this mess because you blew it at the Bay of Pigs and you blew it again now. So, Harvey and him went out each other's throats. And then Harvey, The CIA grabbed them and says, look, we're going to, before Bobby fires you in destroyed your life, you know, what is us to fire you? Let's get you out of the country. We're going to relocate you to Italy. You'll be the station chief of Rome. That's a big deal because the CIA was basically controlling Italy at the time. As a, as a buttress against communism, because Italy was sort of teetering on, they had a huge communist electorate in Italy at the time and they needed the CIA all the way into Western Europe.

Speaker 0We couldn't have that. So, at the time, Harvey, we think is being relocated and stunned, but there's plenty of evidence and plenty of testimony that said, no, he never stopped the, and he was ordered to stay away from Reseli by the way, that he never stopped dealing with Reseli and never stopped meeting with him and they were the best of friends and they would have literally go out and get drunk and curse the Kennedy's together. And these guys have been seen in Marina's down in South Florida. They're being seen in the keys, like you said. And now it's come out as I understand it through the new documents that were released. That Harvey was given some type of past to fly around the country, even after we thought he was finished. he was given some type of past to fly around the country without officially logging in as a passenger on these flights. So what the hell's going on? We don't know.

Speaker 0Also to the the CIA, the FBI who Hoover's always on top of everybody, right? Hoover's, that's why once again, until Kennedy gets hit, people will think the FBI was involved, but I found no evidence to suggest that the FBI was involved prior to the assassination. Yeah. Now, did they, were they involved in the cover-up? 1 million per cent. nobody could deny that. But prior to the assassination, who is just not involved? He's ignoring evidence that would make him a co-conspirator. If you want to say, hey, look, if you see a crime you're supposed to report it, people will tell you, well, then you're just as bad as the guilty if you don't report it. Okay, who is not reporting the crime? But he's not actively involved in the conspiracy, in any which way. He may be seeing transcripts come across as These things are coming across as desk. I list every one of them that have come to light. And he's ignoring them.

Speaker 0He's not reporting them to the secret service. He's not reporting them to the Kennedy to the Kennedy White House. He's not reporting them to the Attorney General. So something's long, but the FBI was not involved in the conspiracy. And the agent's a cleanest cleanest could be, too. The FBI agents were clean. Now, however, the FBI's following Roselli and leading up in They have no idea where he is, where he went, and then the assassination cops, and he pops up again afterwards, where the hell was Reseli, and how the FBI loosened? So, you know, that sort of a blank that we may never know.

Speaker 1I wasn't aware of that, so, okay, Reseli was being followed by the FBI. You have some, you've seen documents to share their following image.

Speaker 0Yeah, my book, he's been followed by the FBI and then the last, he's last seen, he flies to Washington with another man and two women and he's going to meet either a congressman or a senator, I forget what it's like, it's in my book, so he's meeting a member of congress and I think they backed off at that moment, but then they lost track of them. who really wasn't big on taking down senators of congressman. He was big on getting the good on them and saying by the way, one of my agents spotted you with gangster hoodlum element Johnny Reselli and I just wanted to let you know. Don't worry about that file. It's buried. I'm never going to let anyone see it. Wink, Wink, make sure you do what I tell you to do and vote how I want you to vote, especially when the budget committee meets for the FBI. You know, I mean, that's the type of guy who for was. So, you know, I mean, but FBI agents, what following Rosalie lost track of them, and I cite exactly, you know, the sources where that comes from.

Speaker 1Yeah. Well, we talked about in the podcast that the HSCA looked at this question of, you know, did the mafia kill Kennedy and they determined that the commission at large did not order it, but they didn't have any surveillance or they had almost no surveillance on Marcelo and Traficante, so they kind of accepted them from their from the official finding. So what I want to do is go through some of the major bosses and just kind of do not necessarily a speed round, but I want to just get your takes on sort of each of these players and maybe how they fit in or or how they don't fit in. So we'll start out with Jimmy Hoffa.

Speaker 0Yeah, just to be clear, because a lot of people will mistake Jimmy Hoffa for some type of mob store or mob boss. And he wasn't, you know, a deep dive into Jimmy Hoffa, which I have done reveals him to be exactly what he was. He was the leader of the team's to union. which was nationwide, one of the biggest, if not the biggest union in the country, next to maybe the UAW run by Walter Reiter. He's up there half, he's the one of the biggest if not the biggest, the teams as well. And the teams from the beginning of the teams to unions, the mafia, and I go through this heavily in book one of the trilogy, which is called The mafia infiltrated all of the labor unions in the United States, and they saw it as an easy way to control industry. If we could control the labor unions and we could then act as mediators when management has a problem with the workers and we could then squeeze deals for ourselves, and we could also then direct profits and contracts to companies that we own.

Speaker 0So the mafia immediately realized that the unions were right for picking, and they slowly but surely infiltrated themselves into the American labor movement. And the American labor, anybody's familiar with the earlier, anyone who's familiar with the early American labor movement will know that it was very violent. They were constantly, whether it was Whether you read about what's his name, Andrew Carnegie's right-hand man, Frick, when he had a problem, and there was murders involved, and he recall out that the security forces he would hire, and they would fight the workers, and people would get killed. Up into the team's to move, in half of it was half of maybe 20, 30, 40, 50 times. He was in, you know, dropped down bloody fights on the front lines, half of it. He talks about it. sent to the hospital. This is all undocumented. Every time half of was, you know, he got into the mix. So the American labor movement because it's violent at the time and management then would, you know, they would kind of a picket line and, you know, then they would cross who crosses the picket line and gets attacked, etc.

Speaker 0And then all of them going to a melee, there was violent. So the mob sees violence as well. That's our women-appalized violence in this country. Nobody else, the only two people who have a monopoly on violent violence throughout the 20th century was the US government and the mafia, those were the only two entities. And Kifal Vestis Kifal the Cold of Mafia, a government within a government. So if you want to talk about it, they're kind of two governments according to S.D.S. Gefalva. There's really only two people who want to control violence, but the government wasn't hadn't put in enough laws to regulate unions and regulate attacks on unions, etc. So the mafia sort of moved in. So when half of becomes the president of the team's this, he doesn't do it by, hey, let me, I'm Jimmy Hoffa. He doesn't because the mob has the locals, they're controlling the locals that get votes. And if you don't go to the mob and make sure that they deliver the votes to you, you're not gonna get elected, teams to president.

Speaker 0So he's got to make alliances with monsters in specifically Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Those are the three places that they had really, really Detroit because half of it was from Detroit. So did Detroit mob had their claws in torn? Chicago because Chicago controls everything west of Chicago and New York who controls everything from the East and Seaboard to Chicago. So those are the two big entities besides Detroit where half of us from. If they don't tell you you're going to be president, you're not going to be president. That's just the math. That's the way it is. One plus one equals two. That's how it works. So half of a then has to make a deal with the mob. In doing so, He was a tough guy, by the way. He didn't always roll over when the mob asked them for favors. The mob came to him and I laid this out in the book. If the mob came to Hoffa would have crapped the ill and said, you know, I'm open and up a coffee company.

Speaker 0I need five million. And he looks at the coffee company and says, this ain't worth a shit. You ain't getting a nickel out of Hoffa. I don't care what boss you are who you come from. If you run all five families in New York, you ain't getting that money. Period. And nobody wants all five families, but hypothetically. But if you came to Hoffa with a deal on your homopster, and you say, look, I'm opening up, I'm going to build an airport with six hotels around it, and I'm going to open up two casinos, and we're going to draw a gambler's in, and Hoffa thinks it's a good deal. How much you need? 50 million. You got it. He writes a check. So, half the always invested positively in terms of returns for the teams to pension fund. There's no denying he made big money for the teams this, but he is doing it in a farious way now and then because he's getting involved with deals that are schemes, but they're run by mobsters and they end up being good, they end up being profitable.

Speaker 0You know, obviously, I say schemes in terms of the mob's involved, so something's going to be wrong. but on paper it's a good deal and half an old give you the money unless it's a good deal. So half an hour is in with the mob, he's in with the bosses and the bosses sort of like have like a really good relationship with them and a team's to pension fund is eventually worth hundreds of millions. So when they need something like Traficante needed money for Alamand's hotel, he could call up Jimmy Hoffman and say, look, I know Jose Alamand. He makes plenty of money. He's a big honor down here in Miami. If he's already sculpted out the hotel, it's going to make a good return for your teams this. And so half of knows it's a mob boss. Obviously knows it's illegal, but he also knows he needs traffic updates to deliver the unions in Florida when he needs them. and traffic content controlled a few unions as well.

Speaker 0So they make deals. That said, when half a hated Bobby and Bobby was coming after half a two, half a new that Marcelo and traffic content also hated Bobby. And those three men, half a traffic content, Marcelo, usually instrumental in wanting to kill our John Kennedy with whoever was willing to do it with them. Now it was half a now at one point or another, If anybody thinks Hoffa was directly involved, this is what I came to the conclusion that through all the evidence that I researched. Marcelo and Traffa County were typical mob bosses. They wanted to kill John Kennedy to get rid of Bobby, by the way. It wasn't to kill John Kennedy. Marcelo made numerous statements to the effect of if you cut the dogs tail off, you still get bitten. You've got to cut the head off and the head and die tail and head die together. Meaning you've got to go after Jack Kennedy. Another time he said, you kill Bobby and Jack will send out the Marines to destroy us.

Speaker 0He'll send out the militia. We're done. You've got to kill Jack and Bobby get, you know, he's done the next day. He's out. Nobody's going to keep him, especially Linda Johnson, who despised Bobby. So they knew if they could get Johnson in. Bobby's gone. So that's why they thought to focus on John. That's not to say that the CIA had the same motives as the mob. The CIA wants to take out Kennedy because they want to dump it on. I get heavily into this in my book as well. They want to dump it on Oswald. as alone shooter who appears to have escaped or trying to escape and was killed in the process of escaping to Cuba because Castro was behind it. They wanted it to look like that so that the American public would demand an invasion of Cuba, which is what they wanted during the missile crisis and they didn't get it. And now they figured, you know what? If we get rid of Jack Kennedy and they were terrified that Jack Kennedy was going to get in for another four years and he was going to destroy the United States by the end of that

Speaker 0You got to look at politics today how each side despises the other and says it's the end of the world if you vote for the other side. They do it all day long. Think back now in 1960s, that's exactly how the CIA viewed Kennedy. They said he's easy on communism, he's easy on the Soviet, he's exchanging love letters with Krushev. We're going to be done. This guy gets in another four years. The whole country is done. Freedom is over. So this is how they thought of it to give you an idea of their motivation behind saying, we got to get it rid of them.

Speaker 1I want to ask you, because so unhoffered then I understand, basically, because I always wondered, why is he afforded this level of cloud? He's not, he's not a made man, but the answer is because he controlled the money and because he did the mafia right for the most part. Now let me ask you a quick question. I don't want to go super deep on this, but I just feel like, I would kick myself if I didn't ask you this. Do you have thoughts on the film, the Irishman, as it relates to it?

Speaker 0Yeah. I mean, you know, I look, I don't want to knock another writer who put time and effort into it. What I will say is this. She-in was indisputably a mobster and a tough guy. and a big guy with the unions. There's no arguing at that point. I read the book and I did research around it. There's no doubt that she and is who he claims to be in the sense that he was close with Russell Buffelino, who was the boss of Pennsylvania. He was close with the team citizen, he was close with Hoffa. There's no denying that. However, he is the big, however. I'm reading the book. And I know who killed Joey Gallo at Unburder's Clam House. It was a guy by the name of Sonny Pinto. This is, for your viewers, or listeners, this is a slight departure, but try to follow me. Joey Gallo was part of the Columbo family, originally the profacci family. And he launched the rebellion against profacci. At some point or another years later, they decide they want to kill Joey Gallo.

Speaker 0The family does. The profacci family, which is now the Columbo family. They're going to kill Joey Gallo. So, eventually he's seen in a burdo's clam house in Manhattan's little Italy, and Sunny Pinto was down the block, eaten Chinese food with a couple of guys, and this guy Joe Fish Nuperelli spots Gallo at the clam house. And he runs down the block and he both burst into the Chinese restaurant and he says, hey, Sunny, guess who's in the clam house? Joey Gallo. He spits up his food, he can't believe it. He says, let me get the green light from Joe Yack. Now, not only do I know this from actual history, but I know people who were involved. This is only the, this is 1970s. This isn't that long ago. There are people who still live that can tell me about this. So I talked to them. Joey Gallaud and these guys left the Chinese restaurant. and they call Joe Yack, who is the cost of the family. And they says, look, Joe, we got Joe, we got it up the block.

Speaker 0So we take them out. He says, what the hell he is waiting for? Hang up the phone and get on it. Hang up the phone. They don't even have time. Usually, if you're going to do a high story hit, you get a crash car, you steal a car, so that you could crash a cop car and pursue, comes down the block. The crash car slams into the cop car and gives the guys time to do it and get away. They don't have time for a crash car. They don't have time to steal a getaway car. You also want to steal a getaway car. You don't want to kill somebody and leave in your own car, right? They don't have time. They go, we're going to use our own cars. Go run up to the apartment down the block. Get the pistols and let's go in. So sunny Pinto and these two other guys go in and they blast gallo and they kill them. This is known throughout the underworld, throughout the New York underworld. There's no disputing this, that Sonny Pinto did it.

Speaker 0When my friend was boss and clumberal family, he took over the family in the late 1980s or early 1990s. He was still sending a stipend stipend to Sonny Pinto, who was on the lamb since he killed Gallo 20 years earlier, because the family still taken care of him So this is like, this is not even a question. So I'm reading the Sheen book. And he says, yeah, I killed Joey Gallo too. Besides blowing half of his brains out, I also killed Joey Gallo. I shot him right in his head on burdals. I know what's bullshit. So now I say to myself, all right, the guy just lied, blatant lie. Why is he lying? So there's a couple of reasons you might say, maybe why he's lying, maybe he wanted to, you know, Casey's pinched for something he wants to say, oh, you know, I tell lies and truth. I don't know what's that was a lie. You can't get me for that. I was just making it up. I don't know why the guy's lying, but I know he's lying.

Speaker 0So now go back to the half of murder. He says he did that, too. At first, he said it was a guy named Sally Buggs-Berguglio. Then he went back on it and said it was him. Why did he say it to him? Originally said it was Sally Bugs. Everybody knows it was Sally Bugs that pulled the trigger. So if it was Sally Bugs that pulled the trigger, why did you say it to you? Well, now there's a lot of money on the table. They want to make a book about them. They want to do a movie about them. They want to do documentaries. They want he's going to be a superstar. He's going to make millions of dollars. I did it. So, once again, go back to what I originally said. Was he against the, yes, was he a tough guy? Absolutely. There were plenty of tough Irish guys in the mob. Use Macintosh, use Apples Macintosh was a calm line person to go, was a head of the Columbus family, years later, and kept it for years, but decades.

Speaker 0His main guy, right hand man, was use Apples Macintosh. They tough Irish men. There were plenty of Irish tough guys in the mob. She and was a tough Irish guy in the mob. There's no doubt about that. Was he involved with the teams? Did he know Hoffa? Did he answer directly to Russell Buffelino? Yes, yes, and yes, did he shoot Hoffa in the head? He said it was Boguglio first, who everybody agrees with, then he said it was himself, and when he said it was himself, he also threw in a shock Joey Gallo. I don't believe he pulled the trigger. So it's a money grab it's a money grab it was he in the know to some extent. I think so. I think if you're around Russell Buffalo, you know, and Buffalo, you know, was definitely have something to do with it. Buffalo, you know, was back and forth half his body was incinerated at a garbage contract to a garbage disposal place. This is what all the leads lead to.

Speaker 0This is not my hunch. There are people in formance who came forward said, this in this place they incinerated like a dozen guys there. First of all, if you're gonna do a hit on half a, you gotta make sure that body disappears. It's Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the labor movement. You don't want that body popping up somewhere in the investigation. You want it to disappear. That's number one number two for years before I did the research I used to hear they disposed of a min Yankees stadium or giant stadium in the Verenzano bridge and the New Jersey and I'm I'm going what are they added in minds the FBI How dumb could they be to listen to these idiots lying to them? Nobody's traveling 1200 miles with a body when when you when you're taken half on you know you're killing them Either that hole is pre-dog and it's within 10, 15 minutes from where you are, or the incinerator is already revved up to 100,000 degrees and you're ready to throw them in.

Speaker 0Because you're not going to drive, you think I'm going to stop going through toes with the back. on. Oh, no, there's a trooper. I hope you don't pull me over. I got Jimmy Hoffman my trunk. Give me a break. There's the mob on it. He's still going to get rid of the guy right there and Michigan. So he's the place where they believe he was incinerated. Russell Buffalo, you know, leading up to half his disappearance is back and forth on the phone with the guys who own that company constantly leading up to the day half of disappears and suddenly the phone And be good luck.

Speaker 2That's true.

Speaker 1Yeah, come on. It's definitely right there. All right, hey, let's, let's move on to my landscape real quick. And I mean, look, my understanding is he's, he had a lot of involvement in Cuba, sort of Bob's account, and obviously his relationship with Lucky Luciano, really showing people how to do offshore banking, is isn't there any tie-in between my or landscape and the can.

Speaker 0No, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you what I think and this In my first volume, Myolansky plays a central role in volume one of the Bugata trilogy, Rise of Empire. He plays a central role because he was sort of like the untitled console year of the entire mob. and he was directly, directly answered to Lucky Luciano, but could speak with Luciano's tongue. He was as respected as any mob boss in the country at that time. There's no taking that away from my landscape. He was an absolute genius. He was respected. What he said was law. And he spoke with Lucky Luciano's tongue. Meaning if Lansky walks into a social club, and says, this is what you're going to do. I don't care how big the mobsters are. He's speaking for the boss. You're going to listen to him. So there's no taken out away from Lansky. Lansky was instrumental in opening up Cuba. He had relations with Fulgencio Batista.

Speaker 0Lansky was instrumental in getting paving the way of Ben Seagull going into Vegas and continuing to build Vegas with alongside the Chicago mob who would have always the more bigger powerhouses in Vegas than New York. But Lansky and Costello were partners with the Chicago mob in a lot of those hotel casinos. So there's no taking anything away from Lansky. However, Lansky, there's no evidence to point to Lansky being part of the conspiracy other than somebody mentioned he said, ah, I put a million dollars on Kennedy's head or something or somebody takes him out, which you could have said in passing aggravated. I don't know. But whatever the case is, there's no real evidence pointing to Lansky as the man, the other thing there's a couple of other reasons you could lay out. Lansky wasn't in hot water like traffic content and Marcelo He wasn't in the same problem later on in life during the 1970s.

Speaker 0He had problems like they did, but not in the 60s, number one. Number two is Lansky was too smart and too patriotic to kill the United States president. He loved our country and he was just too smart. I'm not going to get involved with killing the president. Why? When the president's not doing anything to me, everything points to Marcelo and Traffa Conte with Haifa in the background, lurking in the background. And at some point it seems that Marcelo and Traffa Conte kind of shot Haifa out of everything and wanted him to make it look like they were doing on the favor though so they could get more money from the pension fund. Hey, we did your favor, we got rid of that Kennedy. Meanwhile, they were getting rid of them for themselves. You know, and kind of for Haifa too, but mostly for themselves.

Speaker 1So, okay, let's go on to Samji and Kana real quick and I know it's you know so much about all this stuff. It's kind of like we're to even start. But what we covered is how he came up through the Chicago Mafia You know he he was kind of everywhere in terms of he wasn't Justin Chicago. He was doing deals in a lot of other places Las Vegas most notably Um, and he had a good relationship with Marcelo and Traficante, he was, uh, you know, looping a man on the Las Vegas scum. Obviously, he was involved. He talked about earlier through, through, uh, Johnny Ricelli. He was brought out on the CIA plots. When I found really interesting about Giancana, so obviously he knows about the CIA plots. Okay. and he's looped in on him and then he leverages, he goes, oh, we got this relationship with the Fed. It's great. I was wondering what they think about Dan Rowan and if he's trying to hook up with my girlfriend, you know, I mean, the guy throwing down to be a complete F-op.

Speaker 0So I'm going to give you my opinion, please. Yeah, so Sam Giancana is legitimate tough guy, but a quiet tough guy. He comes up through the ranks in Chicago, and Bob does what he's got to do, and he's known as a stable. Like in other words, a stable in the sense that even though he kills people, he would think somebody who kills people is unstable, but they're plenty of guys who could live, you know, Tony soprano think of for your viewers. He goes home. He kisses his wife and kids. He loves them. He's stable. But he also cut somebody head off in the bathtub. You know, I mean, so, Jim kind of sort of thought of his like that. You'll kill him in a minute. But he's stable. You could trust him with the Borgada. They gave him, they gave him, Joe bad as a carter. Anthony Joe bad as a carter was the boss of the Chicago mob, the real boss. Then he had a couple of guys around them. Ayupah and Glaci, there was a few guys around the Cotto and Paul the Way to Rica.

Speaker 0And I think, I think Paul the Way to Rica was the guy who groomed Giancana. In other words, brought him up in the life and says, look, it's safe. We'll give him the reins. We want to kind of step into the shadows because there's a lot of heat. And we'll let Giancana be the front man. Now Giancana, He was known, as I said, as a stable quiet guy, his wife died suddenly, and it's very sad because he was a loving husband. But his wife died suddenly, and all of a sudden, he's running around like a lunatic and Vegas with Frank Sinatra, tapping anything he could get his hands on. And, you know, I mean, like, he's like acting like a teenage boy. And, you know, you know when he and he's fooling around having all these love affairs with all these different women and then he's jealous of this guy comedian who's supposed to be fooling around with this singer, Philist Magwaya, who he's dating and he really really lowered himself because a big mob boss is not supposed to be chasing a woman.

Speaker 0Women come to me, I'm the boss, right? You you know it's like the quote unquote manly you know thing like I don't I don't chase women they want to come to me and all they don't that's you know but all the sudden now Jean kind of is going oh she's got a boyfriend can we bug the apartment and see you kind of diminishing your own value right so he's chasing the girl and now he's asking to CIA so the mob starting to think of him is like maybe he's a problem maybe he's got to be removed to which they eventually do they eventually take him out in the

Speaker 1on Phyllis McGuire. She wasn't the only one. There's also Judith Exner. So Judith Exner, she was first was with Frank Sinatra and then he introduced her to JFK. And then she started having an affair with JFK and then once Jankana found out about it, then he started having an affair with her. And the fair was shut down after the Hoover meeting, Hoover called it out and on that. I'm going to ask you this, who do you think killed Giancana and why did you ever do it?

Speaker 0Oh, it was. Butch Blassie. I mean, no, I can't afford it. So when Giancana comes out of, he leaves for Mexico. He wants to be done. He leaves for Mexico. He's traveling the world, he's opening up because he knows he's making a lot of money and he's enjoying himself. Jim can't always love being with women after his wife died. So he's dating all kinds of women and he's living the high life and he's an old man at the time, but he wants to live it up. He's got money, he's out of Chicago, it doesn't have to worry about anything, and he's floating around doing his thing in other places in the world. Eventually, they bring them back to the United States. They put pressure on the Mexican government to deport them back to the United States because they want to question them in front of committees, right? So he comes back. Okay. So he takes a hit, a contemptive court, and goes to jail. He gets out again.

Speaker 0They want to subpoena again. At some point, the Chicago mob knows that they're never going to let up with this guy. But now they're not even letting them leave. So he's in a face. We got to get rid of him. So Joe Badd is the only person who could. Joe Badd is Anthony Joe Badd as a call to was the boss, as I said, of Chicago. The boss is the only guy who could sanction a hit. it's got to come from Joe bad is nobody else could just decide that they want to kill Jean Connor if you do your dead the next day got to come from the boss so Joe bad is obviously puts a contract on Jean Connor says look at rid of him he's going to another committee hearing tomorrow before the committee hearing just get rid of this guy and it's done And that they really, really felt like they had their hands tied because they did not want another round of publicity for killing them. They just wanted them to go away and originally he did, but now he was dragged back and there's an whole whole not the round of publicity.

Speaker 0Let's just end it, get rid of this guy. So, Butch Blassie goes to dinner at his house. When Butch Blassie leaves the whole family's dead, Jinkan is daughter, the brother-in-law, they're all having dinner in the basement. Italians, when I grew up, Italians always had kitchens in the basement. The reason why was we couldn't afford air conditioning in the summer, and if we were going to cook in New York, you got a cool basement, it's a little cooler, you cook in the basement, eat in the basement, gin kind of is in the basement, and he's frying up his things in the kitchen basement, and blasting leaves. Now, black, there's two cars sitting on gin kind of house. There's a federal surveillance and a state surveillance. They just happen to drive away. They drive away for that little, little stitch of time where he's killed. And one of them says, oh, yeah, we just figured we'll take a ride. And we saw a bunch of blasts he entered a house, but we figured they're just friends.

Speaker 0So they'll just have, you know, what are we going to sit on the house for? So they leave. But blasts he clips them? and leaves, throws the gun nearby. And then goes home and breaks about it to everybody. I just killed Jean Conna. He told everybody. So it's not like it's a secret that he killed them. And he killed them on a car, those orders. So, you know, then they came into the CIA killer. Well, look, no, the CIA didn't kill him. The mob did, but you blast he did. But the CIA may be order the federal surveillance to take a powder. I don't know. Maybe somebody called the squad cons says you guys could leave or you know you wanted back it head court is you know your shift is over come in I don't know obviously there are a lot of things that the government may have done you know I could go through the whole list of secret service areas that the two coincidental to overlook I could go through the whole list of CIA things that the two coincidental overlook and two cars leave in the property at the same time while he gets clipped and then showing up later come on.

Speaker 0something's obviously wrong, right? So, you know, did they kind of like wink nod to a caro so that he could take care of this not, you know, this this phone and everyone's side, maybe because they didn't want him back in front of the committee either chatting away. So, if they can do it, is the point I'm making, the mob did it. That's caused Matt. Don't forget this. This is caused the biggest amount of confusion over the last 60 years. The idiots in this country who go, the mob did it. No, the government did it. The mob's too stupid to do it. The government's too small to do it. The mob did it. The government did it. They did it together. If you could get that through your head that they worked together, half the problem is solved. You know, that Oliver Stone made a whole film and he goes, oh, the mob's too stupid to do it. Oh, whatever. The mob did it. It Jim Garrison was in bed with Carlos Marcelo.

Speaker 0I go through that whole thing in my book as well.

Speaker 1I wanted to come back to that in just a second when we get to Marcelo, but if I could, I've got a rebuttal, so I get happy people send me emails and they when they take issue with something I said or or they disagree or whatever. And I have a rebuttal from Randy Barnett who is a fan of the show and he's a law professor at Georgetown University. He wanted to let everyone know that merchandise mart at Chicago. I kind of made it sound like a department store. It's actually a big place where people rent out stalls to sell things and In 1930, when it was first constructed, it was the largest building in the world, so that's just some context. And then also, he wanted me to lay out that Phyllis McGuire was a huge star, not just some random person, like she was a massive star at the time, so that was a big deal, which underlines your point of kind of, kind of, That's me, so I wanted to correct the record on that.

Speaker 1Want to move on to Johnny Roselli, we're getting into the, to the, you know, the thing of it here, Roselli, Traficante, then Marcelo. So you, you said earlier that Roselli had done hit, I didn't realize that he actually, I thought he was more on the business side.

Speaker 0Oh no, he's no killer. Absolutely. He, he, he was friends friendly with this guy, Jimmy, And they always stayed close, and Jimmy the Weasel Fradiano became an informant later in life, and confessed to, I don't know how many murders a lot, that he said, you know, I go out of this guy, shot this guy, burn that guy, whatever, he killed a lot of people. And Jimmy the Weasel Fradiano directly from him, he said that, Johnny Reselli did a lot of work. He put in a lot of work and work in the mob is meaning kill people, contracts. When they say somebody put in a lot of work, that means they killed a lot of people. And that came straight from Jimmy to Weasel, Friday, and all. So in his other reasons to believe that, Roselli, he wasn't just welcomed into the Chicago mob and then sent as an ambassador to Las Vegas and eventually, and I'm rather originally in Hollywood, he was sent as an ambassador to Hollywood,

Speaker 0There's a reason why you said in that guy. One is he's good with diplomacy. He knows how to talk to people. And two is, if there's a problem, whether he's going to do it himself, or he's going to get people to do it, he's going to take care of business. This is the day and age where the mob is the mob. As I said, they kill. Now things have changed a lot, but they kill. So Rosalie was known for work.

Speaker 1Pretty, so when Roselli testified to the H.S.C.A. he made it clear that he wouldn't speak on Travecante and he made it clear that he was afraid for his safety regard.

Speaker 0Well, Roselli said, basically, that he did speak a little about Travecante, which aggravated Travecante. He spoke about him to the extent that he said he was sort of like the Spanish See, I am a pastoral plot, but he stopped there. He never implicated him in the Kennedy assassination. But he did admit that Traffacante was sort of like the CIA interpreter. Traffacante was in Florida. He spoke fluent Italian and fluent Spanish, which both languages are very close, by the way. They're both of the Latin origins. So he was basically, you know, kind of sort of saying Traffacante was involved with us during the Castro thing. But that's all I know. I don't know anything about Kennedy and I can't say anything about Traffacante with regard to Kennedy.

Speaker 1Do you think Traficante killed Roselli?

Speaker 0100%. Oh, that's a fact. Oh, 100%. So Trafico, Roselli keeps getting called to these things that's unsettling to Traficante. It's not, he's not happy that even Roselli's admitting he was in interpreter. First of all, you know, like, you know, that's like, You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to, you know, back then, especially or Martha, the code, the silence, the whole thing, was very live at the time. You don't go in front of a committee. When they say, you know anything about, I don't even know traffic contact. Traffic contact, they whoop. I never met him, but we have a picture of you with him. Must have been a freak thing. I don't know who that guy is. That's the day in time we're talking about. And Rosalie's going in front of the committees, and I think he had a couple of closed sessions too, where they weren't sure exactly what he said, and they're wondering. So, you know, like, for example, I think traffic contact when he was defeated said I wanted to be in front of an open committee.

Speaker 0He's telling all of my bosses across the country who he's colleagues with. You're going to see in here what I do. Nobody's going to, nobody's going to try to pin some word or sentence or paragraph on me that I didn't say behind closed doors. You know, that's sort of like, so, and he was very evasive, uh, a traffic hard day was. And so, Rosalie now is getting on everybody's nerves. And, you know, he shows up, he looks like a lobbyist from Washington. He's dressed through the lines. He's carrying it at that shake case. The news and media are following him. But at the same time, he's leaking stories to this guy, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

Speaker 0Uh, if I, if when I was active on the streets, I did ice, ice and hijackings. So if I read an article and it says, Louis front day hijacked this truck on such and such a date with so-and-so. And I'm like, all right, there was two of us besides me on that day, but it says they just did it with that guy. Where's the other guy? He's the guy who's talking, or I read my indictment, and there's four of us on a high jacking, and we know there was, there's only three of us in the room. Where's the fourth guy? He's the rat. You know if you're in the know who it was, right? So the stories are being read by the mob, and they're going, that's coming from Reselie. He's spitting it all out. What is it gonna end and he's terrified of being deported? That's what his motivation is We're going back to jail. He's just a little small stint. So and he's getting older. You don't want to go to jail So they're worried that he's gonna talk.

Speaker 0So traffic on they specifically gets a permission because once again I'd mention this earlier to you You just can't kill somebody who's not from your bogata. Trafford County could kill anybody from his family in Florida. He's the boss of that family. The boss is the father, the patriarch of a family. Just like you could, if you have children up until recent times when no one's allowed to discipline their children physically, right? It's a different world now. But when I grew up my father gave me a crack, you know, that there was a different world. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm just saying this is what happened. So if you could discipline your children, but I can't, I'm your neighbor. Can I walk over and give your son a crack in the head and tell him, get off my lawn? You would kill me if I did that. You would say, how dare you touch my son? I could discipline my son. You can't.

Speaker 0Same thing with a mob family. Trap account they could kill anybody in his family. But he's got to get permission from Chicago to kill Rosalie. Because Chicago owns Rosalie. He's with the Chicago mob. So he sends words to Chicago and says, I need to clip them. Chicago gives him the OK. This is in the book, too. In my book, Clash of Titans. Chicago gives him the OK, and Traficante has one of his soldiers. He goes out on the out one day, and it was kind of a sad story because he's older. They said, look, we threw a garada around his neck, shove the rag in his mouth, and he barely resisted. The guy was an old man and he had emphysema so he was already having trouble breathing and he's schooled he's killed how many people in his life he knows it's done no matter how hard you fight you know you're going and there's no way a frail man is going to beat up two or even three guys on the boat. It's over so he just gave in they killed them and then they must have let him I wrote this in the book too They must have let him sit around for a little while because he could have he was frail and small enough to be folded into the barrel that they threw him in the drum

Speaker 0But they caught him in half, which means regular mortists must have set in. And then, you know, as I wrote in my book, they caught him in half for the same reason we breaks spaghetti. So it fits in the pot. You know, they caught him in half and put him in the in the barrel. And then they didn't realize he'd rise through the top. They caught him open from naval to neck. But apparently there were some upper parts of his lungs because of the infosema that had air pockets. And he floated to the top. He brought the whole bottle like the barrel, like a cork. And you know, had he had they not found him within a few days or would have sunk to the bottom again, but it didn't. And basically, you know, after that, the guy, one of the guys who was involved in the hit said, I carried it out and he was one of a soldier for Traficante. And then they picked up on a bug in Chicago, one of the bosses saying, Traficante had it blew it, meaning the body was found.

Speaker 0He employed me and he killed them, he didn't blow the death, but they didn't want them found, they wanted them sunk to the bottom, disappeared, it looks like he left town. They left his car in an airport to make it look like he got on a plane. The mob used to meet people's cars in the airport, so it looks like you took off on your own. And he used to say to people, if I'm ever missing, go to the airport, you'll see my car there. And sure enough, sure enough, his brother-in-law, the next day took a ride to the airport, Miami and found his car there parked. Wow.

Speaker 1All right, let's, let's go on to, that's, that's, that's very helpful. That's good context. Well, let's go on to traffic contay. And we've talked about him a lot here in general, but I do want to point out this, the Jose Alaman conversation. That was in September of 1962. And when we get to Marcelo, He tells there's a guy at Becker who talks about the similar confession for Marcelo. You know what month and year that was? September of 1962. The same time. So that just kind of underlines the Jose Alema on conversation we're having earlier. Let me ask you, have you heard of Danny Sheen? You know, Danny Sheen is?

Speaker 0Oh. lawyer, writer, I think, lawyer.

Speaker 1He's a guy who worked for Anthony Bailey and I'm ready to have to be Bailey on a visit.

Speaker 0I was on visit with Joe Watts was one of the gunmen. Joe Watts was a big mobster on the John Guy and he was a dear friend of mine. Yeah, when I was in jail with Joe Watts, Joe Watts had FV Bailey and FV Bailey came up on a visit once, so I had a nice conversation with him. I mean, he was like talking to an icon. You know, he'd been around for a long, he'd had so many big cases. I was also represented by William Constless, so I had the good fortune of being around some big attorneys in my time. And by the way, your friend Randy shout out to him,

Speaker 1Danny Sheen was an associate at F. Lee Bailey's law firm during the Watergate situation and they represented James McCord, the Bailey did. And we kind of lay out, laid it out on one of the episodes and he's actually got an interview with Julie and Dorie and a few other ones where

Speaker 0Yeah, I'm, I'm a fan of Gillian's for sure.

Speaker 1Oh, I'm sure. Actually, this is great. So, so she in basically says that their lead investigator, this guy, Andy Toney, went down to interview Traffa Conte, because Traffa Conte was a client of the firm, an absolutely daily representative Traffa Conte, too. And while he was talking to him, Treffa Conte laid out this scenario, it was related to Watergate because of a check that was in McCord's pocket and that check went back to the Benco International in Mexico City and it's supposedly the same thing. the same check that paid the watergate burglars came from the bank account that was used to fund Cuban exiles supposedly, okay. This is what she and says, Traficante told their investigator. So the bottom line is she and says, Traficante said, look, I put together the team that killed Kennedy, but I did it to kill Castro, and then it ended up being something different, but I'm the one Um, have you ever looked at that or does that concern?

Speaker 0Well, yeah. So I mean, so I believe that, um, you know, once again, to rewind the little at first traffic, they did not want to remove Castro, right? At some point, when he was involved in the CIA mafia plot to kill Castro, I believe that he was working as a double agent, a lot of evidence came forward. And by the way, Bill Harvey suspected him of being a double agent. because he didn't believe Roselli was, I mean, Traffa Conte was putting his best efforts into killing Castro and he couldn't figure out why. So he believed he was a double agent. That said, at some point or another, I think Traffa Conte and Marcelo realized that they had to get rid of Kennedy or they were gonna go. Bobby had this attitude where it's you or me. Bobby was ruthless. He was a seven-year-old of, you know, the Justice Department. He was, you know, like a Jesuit monk. He's going to, you know, he's very, you know, idealistic.

Speaker 0He's going to get you. And he's going to stop at nothing to destroy you. And they knew that it was also him. And he was not only inviting Marcelo, but he had Marcelo's wife. uh, subpoenaed. He sees their bank accounts. The wife is crying every day. The kids are crying. And we're going to lose our father. He dumped them in the Guatemalan jungles, Marcelo. He's doing the same thing to traffic on days, torturing him. So they felt like we have to get rid of them. Now the mob's goal, as I said, there may be different motivations when conspiracies take place. You can't say everybody has the same to say motivation. When it's a large conspiracy, if you think everybody's motivated by the same exact thing, you're going to ruin your whole investigation. You have to think that people may want different things out of it. So, Marcelo and Traficante just want to stop Bobby from destroying them. That's their goal.

Speaker 0And the rest of them I've now is in on it too to like, you know, what, whatever you do because not that they're bringing the other the rest of them I've been on it, but he's got to go Kennedy or he's going to destroy us also. Whatever you do you do, they're not interesting. They know that they got to cover it. At some point or another, though, the governments, I believe any rogue CIA agents who were involved, their goal is to make it look like Castro killed Kennedy so that the United States, the American public demands an invasion of Cuba. That's my opinion on that. And I state why, when Ruby was arrested, Jack Ruby, Who who owns topless clubs is in the precinct that he goes now we're gonna we're gonna go into Cuba We'll invade now. That's an awfully astute observation geopolitical observation for the owner of it of a booby bar I mean come on right a little too much is not a little over his head, but no not quite so I believe that the government's motivation is cold war

Speaker 0Kennedy's selling us out. We got to stop them. We need to stop Cuba, the spread of communism, the domino effect. If we let it continue in Cuba, it'll go sweep across South and Central America, then what do we do? Then it's right at our doorsteps. Then Mexico, what do we do? It'll be just us in Canada, versus the rest of the rest of the, the, everything that's within the Monroe They don't they want to stop Kennedy and get them out of office for their own reasons geopolitical reasons that have to do it involved with by the way Any rogue CO CIA agents don't think they're treacherously killing Kennedy because they hate America They think in their heads that patriotic Americans and Kennedy is the one treacherously selling out America just to keep that clear. I'm not saying that they are, they have no right to kill a president who's elected by the American people. I'm telling you this is what they think at the time to give you their mindset.

Speaker 0Where does Trump account they fit into this? Trump account they is down with all of the Cuban exiles who were trained by the CIA's So, there's evidence, Rosalie, I'd said, I think to Jack Anderson at one point, that Traffa Conte sent the shooters. He believed Traffa Conte sent the shooters being Cubans. So now let's go with that and say, was Rosalie telling the truth, the Traffa Conte sent some of the shooters. Now who were the shooters? We don't know. I don't know. I didn't try to get into that in my book either. Was Woody Harrelson's father there? He might have been. Were their Cubans seen in the windows? There were dogs in guys seen in the book, the Pository, who were in Oswald. There might have been Cubans, but there's another piece of evidence that we should keep in mind. When Rose Charme was beat up and thrown out of the car and picked up by Louisiana officer, Fruge, she said they're going to kill Kennedy.

Speaker 0This is probably just, she's a topless dancer, slash prostitute at the time, working woman, These guys who were driving with me said, we're on a way to drop off drugs, drop you off, and then go kill Kennedy. She goes, they said, who are they? They were Italians. Now, they were apparently dropping off drugs and they left Florida and they're heading to Dallas. Why are who are these guys that she thinks are Italians doing a drug run between Florida and Texas? Well, trafficante is the one sending drugs all over the country because he's getting it in through my amy just like in the 1980s, right? My amy vice times drugs was still coming through everything in my amy. So back then especially, trafficante is controlling all that and then disperses it throughout the country. So these guys are making a drug run. Well, they really Italians, they could have been, but they could have also been Cubans, and she didn't know any better, because I knew a lot of Cubans that I couldn't tell from Italians.

Speaker 0That will bone Cuba. Agent Jack Garcia, who's a friend of mine. retired agent now. He went undercover in the Gambino crime family as an Italian mobster. He was born and raised in Cuba. He speaks Spanish fluently. Born and raised in Cuba went undercover as an Italian. So there's plenty of Cubans who you can't tell from an Italian. their darker skin, they got the talk, the walk, the whole thing, there's a lot of them. So did she mistake those Cubans and what they Cubans, if they were sent by Traficante, were they really Cuban shooters who were sent by Traficante? We don't know. I didn't talk about it and I never said anything definitively if I couldn't prove it in my books. And once again, I If I make a mistake throughout this entire podcast, keep in mind that I don't have my reference notes in front of me. Yeah, I'm working from memory, but if you read my book and I have time to put the exact reference note, you flip to the back, you could see it.

Speaker 1Yeah. You're going off the dome and I, one thing I really like about you, Lou, is that you, uh, you're versed in the granular details and like everything you're saying, you're like, oh, I have it. I've got the receipts, for lack of a better term like not nerdy like you're like a cool guy to talk to and so and you've actually had some life experiences so I'm actually pretty nerdy in size I won't use brick hole right now. Yeah, right, right, right. Anyway, um, so So yeah, man, if you're ever in Columbus Ohio, hit me up. We'll grab a drink I look forward to it, but all right, let's we got a hit on Marcello and then wrap up real quick. So all right Marcello Carlos Marcello so this high level obviously he's the boss of Louisiana Texas is part of that and 1.1 billion dollars a year is how much he brought at a nineteen sixty ninety three money.

Speaker 0Sided by not only publications that have published that figure, but that came directly from the head of the crime commission there. Aaron Aaron colon or something like that and at the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission. There you go. That's craft. Yeah, he thought really looked into them too. That did he didn't just throw that figure out from what I understand.

Speaker 1Marcello had underbosses in Dallas, Joe Sevello and Joe Campizy both of whom were really close to Jack Ruby, and I'm not going to really talk much on Ruby in this podcast because the next one I'm doing is dedicated to just Ruby, but really on the Marcello side of things, there's two potential angles that I'm looking at, and one is, did Marcello order back Ruby killing Oswald, was Marcello sort of the

Speaker 0He did more than that. I'll tell you right now.

Speaker 1So every destination itself, but yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 0So everybody, the people who are willing to admit that the mob had a hand in it, will usually stop at the point where, yes, Marcelo controlled Ruby and Ruby did the shooting silenced Oswald. It was a favor the mob did for, you know, the government conspirators. And that's it. If you do a deep dive, it's much deeper than that. Once again, I urge everybody to read my book. I'm not trying to plug books. 10 people might buy it. I don't get any money for it. Enjoy the book. I get a dollar copy. 10 bucks ain't gonna make or break me. I want you to read it because I want you to understand the story and where it came from. Marcelo is in Louisiana. All of the main conspiracies are coming out of the New Orleans area. Marcelo controls New Orleans. Controls it. Controls not only the underworld in New Orleans, but he has donated the majority to the campaigns for governor for mayor, for the state prosecutor, for the local prosecutor.

Speaker 0He's controlling all of the state government and I go through all of the sources and all of the references where this comes out, where he's in complete control of the political machine in Louisiana. there's nothing he doesn't control. So everybody is in there, who's there? Who's in Louisiana? Okay, as World hangs out at the office, as World starts pounding around with David Ferrie. David Ferrie, in my opinion, is the hub of the conspiracy. Never forget that. Marcelo is funding the conspiracy. Okay, when Kennedy, let me give you the idea of where Marcelo is. David Ferrie, All evidence points to him is the hub of the conspiracy. He's in touch with the mob, he's in touch with the CIA, and he's in touch with the exiles. He's sitting there right in the middle. And he's everything's revolving around David Ferry. David Ferry is close with Marcelo. David Ferry is also close with Asworld, and both of them are close with Guy Bannister.

Speaker 0Now, it's tough to go through all these names. I think the people who are listening to this will know who they are. This is the first time if I was able to contribute anything to this assassination that's new because a lot of it's been out there I just pulled the pieces together and wrote my own story as best I could. I'm not going to say I cracked the investigation I this has been done by people who came before me that worked their fingers to the bone You know trying to get stuff released documents released for your request digging you know to the nail to get things they are responsible for bringing the evidence out. I put the story together in my book and I think I did a good job of that, but if I'm able to bring anything new to the table, this was it. When Kennedy had to strike a deal with Krushev during the missile crisis. He said, you pull the missiles at a Krushev said, you pull the missiles at a turkey and I'll pull the missiles at a Cuba.

Speaker 0That didn't come out till years later. But Kennedy also promised Krushev that he would never invade Cuba again, like he did during the Bay of Picks. A Krushev wanted that promise because he said, there's no way they would botched it up as bad as they did the first time, the US government. And they blew it because they left the exiles on the beaches by themselves and wouldn't back them up, which was blamed on Kennedy. That and was Kennedy's fault, by the way. I, again, I gave Kennedy a pass for the missile crisis because we're on the brink of nuclear Holocaust. You know, nobody knows what could happen. If there's a 1% chance, I would have went in, but if there's a 1% chance, maybe I'm a little more daring than Kennedy. Maybe he did the right thing, we'll never know. But during the Bay of Pigs, I think he should help those Cuban exiles. We train them. We dump them on the beaches. We should have followed through and helped them.

Speaker 0We can't leave them stranded on the beaches. Everybody blamed him for that. So during the missile crisis, Kennedy says, okay, the cruise ship, we will not invade Cuba again. We will not try. And this is a promise he makes the cruise ship. So what does he do to follow through on that promise? He immediately defunds the program on boost that's fueling The sabotage missions, the conspiracies, etc. to topple Castro and to take back Cuba. He defunds them. So the 100 or 200 million that they've spent and will never know how much it was. Immediately goes to zero overnight. Now the CIA, they want to continue. They're strapped for funds. Nobody's ever brought this up but me. I pat myself on the back. For just this alone, if I could say I contributed anything to this. They're strapped for funds. There's no more funding. Where are they going to go? Don't forget Estis Kifauva. He said the mafia is a government within the government.

Speaker 0So when the first government defunded the exiles, and the CIA no longer has money to fund anything against Cuba, or maybe against Kennedy at that point, Where are they going to go? To the second government, Carlos Marcelo, as you said, is doing $1.1 billion a year, which is more than small countries in either Eastern Europe or South America. He's doing more than their GDP. Carlos Marcelo, one man in Louisiana, he's got all the money in the world to fund a conspiracy if he wants to. They went to him for money. Suddenly when Ferry meets Marcelo, he goes from being broke all the time to passing around Chris Pundit dollar bills to everybody who needs money. And all this, and it's proven that Marcelo was funding the exiles in the beginning, which was a patriotic thing to do because the government wanted to take back Cuba. But after the government defunded, The Cuban, the exile mission to take back Cuba, Marcelo continues to fund the exiles.

Speaker 0Why is he funding them now if he's changed course with the American government's policy? The Kennedy administration's policy. He's funding them because he wants something different. What does he want? The question is obvious. The answer is obvious, rather. So he begins to fund the exiles. He begins to fund even the CIA, I think. The rogue CIA agents. Now let me tell you, how do you fund them? What money did they need? I'm going to tell you what guide is, if you go online, you'll see pictures of me, surveillance photos of me. In California, I'm about to pull a hike. I'm about to knock off an armored truck in California. And the FBI's following me, they're watching me, meaning what my crew, they're watching me, going back and forth at the hotel. I'm from New York. It costs money to bring an entire crew to California and do a heist. I'm funding that. I'm considered the guy who's played around.

Speaker 0I was charged with being the quote unquote, how about the conspiracy, the mastermind. I'm funding it. I'm the leader of the crew. These guys need plain tickets. These guys need hotels. These guys have to be fed three times a day. These guys need beers at night when they sit on the line, or the the DAC or whatever. these guys need care fair, these guys need pocket money, these guys need guns, they need scanners, they need two-way radios, and need everything else that goes with all of us getting on planes and going to California to pull off an army car house. So the FBI pulls the plug on that. I'm 510 grand short. I'm out. I'm out my money. And that was back in 1990. Um, you know, I'm out 10 grand. And that's just for a little house with four guys, what do you think, Daily Plaza cost? What do you think, right? Think about that. You're putting all guys. You're giving them a million dollars of peace.

Speaker 0Maybe the shoot is. You're putting them behind the grass, you know. You're putting them up in the book, the positive story. And maybe even in the doubt text building, where what's his name was spotted. And caught an operating. Braiding, spotted, and there. What do you think? What do you think an operation like that cost? And who's going to pay for it? Nobody ever talks about that. The CIA isn't paying for that. They went to Marcelo. That's who's paying for it and all of the writing is on the wall.

Speaker 1I have a question for you on the Ruby side of things before we get into the Kennedy side. There's so hl hunt right at the big oil billionaire he's got a right hand man named John Kurington that was his executive assistant and And Kurington really was his executive assistant. He was there. There's lawsuits involving him. So he's finally telling the truth about that. but he wrote came out with a book in like 2017 and it wasn't a very big book at all. It was a very little fanfare and one of the parts of the book he talks about H.L. Hunt asking him to go down to the police department and scope out the security on Ruby. and then H.L. Hunt asking him to contact Joe Sevello to set up a meeting at Hunts' House at 6am on the Sunday morning where we're going.

Speaker 0Well, how about this, Matt? Prior to the assassination, Ruby visits the offices of Hunt and prior to assassination, braiding, who we just mentioned, visits the offices of H.L. Hunt. So,

Speaker 1Go ahead, I know my question to you is does that sound possible or like what Keerington said? Does that sound like, yeah, so let me feel like it can be a thunder in some regard or he may have something.

Speaker 0Let me say what I think about all of that. So I believe Ma Sello is the main funder of the conspiracy. I believe that and he's funneling the money through Ferry who then distributes it to whoever the co-conspirators are. whether it be CIA, whether it be exiles, whether it be Oswald, whether it be Ruby, Ferry, I think, is the sort of the chance of the actual checker, the secretary of the treasury for Marcelo, right? So now that said, where does Hunt come in? I kept coming across Hunt, and I did not have enough to point the finger at him. So I kind of just mentioned him and moved on because I did not have the evidence. I did not have a preponderance of evidence like I do against Marcelo, like I do against Ferry, to make it part of the like if I'm, you have to think if they are prosecuted, I'm prosecuting a case. And I'm trying to prove to my reader, this is what happened. a prostitute would be an idiot to throw out things and people that they can't back it because then the defense is going to come in and go, what do you mean?

Speaker 0H.L. Hunt didn't do that. H. Hunt, you're going to look like you're lying about everything. So I had to know that, look, I don't have the goods on H.L. Hunt. And I'm going to open myself to open a lot of criticism if I point the finger at him, having said that. Let's talk about H.L. Hunt for a minute. This is not what I'm putting in a book. This is us having a casual conversation. People hopefully you're open-minded enough to listen and say, look, we're just shooting the breeze with you. We're not saying it's etched in gold, etched in stone. H.L. Hunt is friends with Lyndon Johnson. When Lyndon Johnson is authored the bottom half of the ticket after he loses to Kennedy during the primary. H.L. Hunt pushes Johnson was always a leader. I read the multi-part biography. It's back here somewhere on my shelves that that genius wrote, Robert Robby Carroll, absolute brilliant writer, multi-volume.

Speaker 0I recommend that anybody wrote an excellent biography of four. I think it's up to five volumes. Now, I read four. I think the fifth might be coming out of Johnson. Robert Cairo tells you, Johnson was always a leader. He never wanted to play second fiddle to anybody. He was quote unquote master of the Senate, which is one of the volumes Cairo names, I think, master of the Senate. So, why does Johnson accept the bottom half of the ticket, and no one is going to be Caltown into Kennedy for four years? Well, obviously, you actually want to be president. I don't know about that. HL Hunt was nudging him to accept it, and HL Hunt kept telling Kennedy, and his evidence to state this, anything can happen. You never know. You're a step away or profit away from the presidency. Grab it, take it, take it, grab it. And he listens to H.L. Hunk, because H.L. hunts the big man in Texas. At the Tommy was worked over 700 million dollars, which in today's currency might be how many billions we don't even know.

Speaker 0But he owned like, I don't know, how many oil wells. So, H.L. Hunt, and he used to, he described, by the way, used to bring his lunch to work in a, in a brown paper bag, you know, in an apple and a yogurt or something. We're an apple and an oatmeal, whatever it was. You know, he was like totally like, you know, he lived like a Puritan, but H.L. Hunt wanted Johnson to take the bottom half of the ticket, and he knows that. Now, at some point or another, there's a lot of talk that, Marcelo funded Johnson in Texas. a lot of campaigns, as did H.O. Hunt, right? But Marcelo's funding Johnson, too. What is Johnson doing in return for that campaign funding? Well, evidence came out that he's killing anti-rackets, anti-gambling legislation in committee before it hits the floor. Killing it off the bat, which is part of his $1.1 billion empire a year, is gambling. So Johnson's making sure that that Marcelo's gambling empire continues to strive by helping him through killing legislation.

Speaker 0And it later came out all of this. So now Johnson also don't forget Johnson, who I couldn't point the finger at, definitively either. but there's a lot of evidence pointing towards Johnson as being very suspicious. So Johnson is friends with H.L. Hunt. H.L. Hunt looks like he's meeting all of the wrong people at the wrong time. So there's something going on, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what and what his role was. So I had to just mention him and get in and out because I don't have the evidence. I don't want to throw it out there and look like a quote unquote crazy conspiracy

Speaker 1But that's kind of where I am on Johnson and on H.O. Hunt as well. I mean a couple of other things that I want to bring up about Marcelo. So September 1962, this is when there's the Ed Becker confession, the whole thing about, you know, if you cut the tail off the dog, that's one thing, but if you cut the head off the dog, the dog will die. It's the same month that Trappacante, You know, told Jose Alamon that JFK will be head. And you got Eugene De LaPara, March of 1963. Talking to Ben, Ben, what's your name?

Speaker 0Yeah. No, he's talking to Ben something who was in bed with Marcelo too, and then Ferret.

Speaker 1Yes, yes, talking about JFK being hit when he comes down south and then here's I mean for Marcello there is there is the question of the mechanics of how he could have possibly done it if he was the spark that with the thing okay the operation where they, you know, wanted to see is, is Marcelo still operating his crime family out of prison, and they're, I have a print lab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That was the operation that got him in prison. And then once he's, once he's there, they run this op called Camtax. Oh, right. It's like prison. When the end. Yeah. Van, Van landing him. Right. Jack VanLany and him, I believe, is named Black and and long story short VanLany Ham talks about all these confessions that Marcelo made, they're all they why don't they give them to us, but exactly they're still we're supposed to have on tapes Marcelo, you're right now the fact that they won't give them to us tells us everything we need to know because if there wasn't shit on them you'd have them yeah

Speaker 1That's exactly, and so, you know, but assuming the tapes support what Van Lanning Ham said and given that he knew that we were going to imagine, so yeah, Marcelo laid out to him that, hey, actually, we controlled the carousel club, Ruby was just a manager. He was skimming from us. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I've been known to us and so we, you know, but I called him to Churchill Farms and told him, you know, what was up and that he owed me a favor and he didn't, Marcelo didn't explicitly spell out to Van Lanyham and thus the favor that I cash done was him killing Oswald, but he said he was completely unbelievable.

Speaker 0That's exactly how a mob works. You got a guy by the balls, his life's on the line. You could pretty much cash in on anything with the guy. Exactly. You know, you could dispose the limit. Where do you want from him?

Speaker 1right no exactly so so that's that's I mean so to me there is really strong evidence against Marcello here here's where I get into questions for Marcello and and it really it's the because I could see Marcello uh he's funding the operation we know he's funding Sergio Arcachis Miths correct yes you alluded to

Speaker 0and and we know that he's got close relationship with traffic content now i couldn't find any hard evidence that he had business interest in cuba but i imagine he's got to have no no absolutely so macello was one of the best is with my landscape when they took over cuba so macello was a good pass up that opportunity and landscape was known for sharing landscape was like the kind of guy He went to all the bosses, he says, whoever wants in, this is what you give us, and this is what you get. They replicated that one of the Godfather movies, when they set around a table and, you know, the gold phone and the whole thing. But Lance, he went to all the bosses. He wouldn't have left out Marcelo, and Marcelo would have never passed on that. So Marcelo also wanted to not only have gambling in Cuba, but he had a tomato can in company. That's applied to US Navy. Right. He wanted to do something with Cuba, but it's tomatoes, too.

Speaker 0And I'll bring one of the things, it's a country.

Speaker 1So here's my question and and I think this this is my challenge with the Carlos Marcelo as the main sort of spark because everything we've laid out I we you and I are an agreement about the fact okay. Um, but the, uh, the thing is you got the autopsy, which if there's a conspiracy, the autopsy had to be fraudulent. Like that's a prerequisite right 100% right, but that means there's got all I'm saying is it seems like it would be easier for someone in the government to be the match that strikes it because they're going to know that let me break it down feel like this.

Speaker 0So I'm never this counting the fact that the government is involved all along. I've said that time and time again, and if we lose sight of it, and a lot of people will go, well, Marcelo Condudio, or Topsie, so he couldn't be involved, or Marcelo couldn't have manipulated the secret service to make that turn on. Elm Street, only that could have to come from. couldn't have been involved, right, or Marcelo couldn't make the decision to walk as well through the basement when Ruby gets them. So he couldn't have been working together. So don't lose sight of that. They're working together. Now, part two of that, what I just said, part two is, don't confuse what happens during the cover-up part, the post-disassination with what happens in the beginning. So as I say in my book, at one point or another, William Harvey, and all kinds of people that are involved on the highest levels, maybe even, maybe even, dollars.

Speaker 0We don't know. Maybe even Angleton. We don't know. Maybe even what's his name? I read his memoir. Helms. Maybe Helms. We don't know. But he's in bed with the CIA, so he knows. They're saying going nowhere to and I'm going to hit an army call like I said in California. Remember I told you that? Okay, now I'm going to hit it. They got surveillance photos of me there. If I was in bed with the head of the CIA or five CIA agents and they told me, Lou, Rob the army call, we need that money and we're going to take it and we're going to give it to the countries in Nicaragua. I could go to California and go, hey, it's me! I'm about to rob an army car! Who cares? Who's gonna arrest me? I'm with the CIA! You can't touch me! You understand? Yeah. So what? No, no, no matter what happens afterwards, he's going to be clear, they ain't coming after him. And now, who's going to be president? Johnson. You think Johnson is going to order a forensic accounting of Marcelo and watch all of the campaign contributions that went to Johnson in Texas for two decades?

Speaker 0Never happen. Marcelo knows that he's going to get away with this. So that's first of all. But then part of the cover up, the autopsy, right? Once they go into cover up mode. That's out of Marcelo's hands. These guys are covering that up on their own. Who is doing a massive cover-up right away? He says, he says, Oswald, contrary to all the information he has on his desk, Hoover. He says, Oswald's alone not. Then he says, Rubies alone not. So if somebody were to kill Ruby, who for what I said, we got a third loan nut and it can till the loan nuts keep piling up and the dial is more correct. That was going on, right? So they're covering it up. Don't forget that. Don't confuse that. How about the secret service? Somebody makes a last minute decision to have that call, the limousine turn, make that shop turn and eventually go on to hell and street right in front of the grassy know who makes that decision.

Speaker 0secret service agent, our sorrows, not our sorrows first. Where does sorrows get the command from, back in Washington from Gerald Bane? Right. And why does Gerald Bane? He's a little interesting thing. Gerald Bane always sat in the front seat with Kennedy on every motorcade up until Dallas. All the sudden Gerald Bane goes, I'm taking a vacation. I'm not going to Dallas. Wait, what do you mean you're taking a vacation? You're going to miss Dallas. It's the biggest motorcade we've had. The most likely of a problem being in Dallas, because that's where all the crazy people are. And they hit what's his name over the head would assign the embadly statement. Adelaide Stevenson, ambassador to UN over the head would assign. We need you in that. I'm taking a vacation. See you guys later. I'm going home. I'll river Darcha. Then all the sudden he decides in the midst of his vacation. I'm going to go back to the White House to the East Wing, West Wing, Revitaheli was running his office.

Speaker 0I think I'm going to work anyway, but I'll do it from the office. And then he's picking up the phone and calling shots from Washington going, uh, we don't want a lot of agents crowd in Kennedy around the car. They're like, what are you talking about? Yeah, we don't want agents to want the back steps. Tell them not to stand on those back steps on the back of the rear bumper. What do you mean? Those are guys that would have struck the shot from behind. You don't want them on the back step. Yeah, get them off the back step. Tell them not to crowd Kennedy too much. And make sure they make this turn on Elm Street, too. And guys are going, the secret service is going. Wasn't bane supposed to be on vacation. So can the mob control bane? Obviously not. So who does somebody on a level with dullest or dullest himself or somebody up there is obviously calling bane and telling, we need these last minute changes to the motorcade route so this thing could happen or we just need them.

Speaker 0Don't worry about why. Don't ask questions.

Speaker 2Yeah.

Speaker 0Okay. So that don't confuse that. So never confuse where people will go, well, if Baines calling the shots from Washington, surely more solo in Trophicante can't control Baine. I agree. But they're not in bed with just mobsters. They're not just dealing with two-bit hotlums with 38 calibus. They're working with the CIA.

Speaker 1And for me, the way that you are phrasing it is the way that the mafia could have done it.

Speaker 0It's the only way. Well, don't do it alone. No. Yeah, it worked. Yeah.

Speaker 1Just so you know, the way my show works is I cover one topic and I go super duper end up, but I don't even look at future topics until I get to have it. season one was all the basic evidence season two is we zoomed in to us world's life season three is okay well who did it we went deep on secret service confirmed everything you said it went deep on deep on jack or Hoover everything that you said is also what we found I went deep on LBJ very deep in same thing you said like I was able to now look this is disputed and some people in the audience continue to disagree with me but Um, Mac Wallace and the guys that people are usually associated with, you know, being a LBJ's instrumentality of who did the killing, I just, I didn't buy that, but LBJ had other issues.

Speaker 0I don't have, I don't have Mac Wallace in Dallas, but I do have, and he could have been, I'm just saying, I can't, I can't say he was there, however. There's a lot of evidence that came from Billy Solestys, that Mac Wallace was killing people to silence people who were involved with Johnson's conspiracies having to do with Washington in Texas.

Speaker 1Sure, that's true, the 1984. We've lived with them then all that, but So anyway, I say that to say I have not, so I'm just now wrapping up the Mafia and this has been incredible for me because I really didn't know how this stuff worked together, but it turns out it's not the Mafia at large. We're talking about Marcelo and Trevor Conte and a little bit of Giancana and some wrote Sally really and working with other entities and so I've got to cover the Cuban excels at all. We haven't covered them at all. Soviet Union. I got to go get to the CIA generals. So, but, but anyway, I've one last question for you. And I didn't bring this up before, but I just weren't just just off the dome. James Files people keep asking me about James Files.

Speaker 0I listen to all my red. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I have more. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've been emailed people of emailed me fan mail, you know, through my website, Louis frante.com is my website. Anybody who reads my books by the way, feel free to drop me a line if you have an issue with anything I've said. Let me know. Give me your thoughts. I'm open. I'm a historian. This is a moving piece. You know, these are moving pieces. We try our best to figure out what happened if you have input feel free If I can't get back here, I will sometimes am busy, but James files, I've had people email me and say well James files don't you believe he did it don't you think he I don't know. I don't know who the shooters were on the ground We're never going to know who was behind the grass, you know, who was in the book depository, who made it in Zaltex building, taking shots. We don't know.

Speaker 1But yeah, I didn't look at James Files, or even address them. I probably should have just in the context of the mafia. But can't really, none of the researchers, I respect, give him any credence at all.

Speaker 0I don't, I don't, I didn't either. I didn't even, I'm in my book. I didn't even, I'm in my book. You know like like I said the on the first I started to I started to get a lot of people emailing me going Why why don't you think a Tim? I did not even mention James files because I did not I had nothing to Substantiate his test is his admitted swift so you know I felt like Anybody could come forward and say I took a shot. I was here. I was there Look, Ditty who the hell knows? Maybe he did maybe he didn't but it wasn't enough for me to even consider

Speaker 1Yeah, okay, I'm just curious if you had because if you're perspective was no, no, no, no, no, you should actually take a look at this thing.

Speaker 0I'll be honest with you, the closest I came to somebody saying they didn't do it, who I think did. was Charles Harrison. And the reason why I'll say that is because and you could argue whether that was him in the picture, the Hobos, or not, whatever the case is. I based my strongest evidence on the fact that at one point he was drunk or high, he was being arrested, he got into a standoff with the cops and he admitted everything. and said that I was one of the shooters, et cetera, and then later when he sold it up, he said I was lying. That was all lie. And we all know that people tell the truth when they're drunk. You know, if a friend tells you, look, I hated you. I hated just in high school when he's drunk. I hated just in high school. I've always been jealous of you. I wish you weren't a lawyer. I hate lawyers, too. I never made it as big as you. All I am is a, you know, you know, whatever.

Speaker 0I don't want to do a medial job. But I never made it as big as you when I hate you. And I'm jealous because he's drunk. But the next morning he says to you, I was just joking, I love you. I love you, I love you. Which one are you going to believe? You're gonna be drunk. Stalin used to have Politburo get together as after their meetings. The whole Politburo used to attend his little parties at night when he played music and get everybody drunk later to the night because all the troops looked out then. And the next, no, the guy's mocked for death the next day because he slipped and said something he shouldn't have said when he was drunk. Even when the Germans were visiting Stalin, the German delegation, I think Von Ribbon trope would his assistants were visiting Stalin. on the eve of war and they're passing around a flask and they're all getting drunk and they're all talking and the guy the German runs out of alcohol and he grabs Stalin's flask and takes a swig.

Speaker 0It's water. That never even drink. He just listened to everybody else who was drunk. So I believe Woody Harrelson had made a somewhat of a truthful admission to some extent and also to the other thing. Don't forget, I mean Charles Harrelson, not Woody. I believe also Charles Harrelson, what does he go to jail for life for? Shooting a judge. What did he shoot the judge with? English used them and you know this is what you do. So there's a couple of things and I still didn't commit to Charles Harrison, but you know, but those things stick out in my mind as if I want to have to say one way or another. who out of all the suspects we've heard about in Dealy Plaza, who would I think could have been there? I would probably say, is a possibility Charles Harrelson, just for those things that I just explained to you. And I'm not sure, he might not have been, but I'm telling you that there's a possibility.

Speaker 0Besides maybe Cuban exiles who would train CIA to use high-powered rifles. right and and braiding or braiding or whatever he was pulled out braiding was caught in the down text building. We were braiding was there. The leading fire shot or just organized it. Maybe he had a radio. We don't know, but he was in the down text building. So we know he was there for that.

Speaker 1Yeah. Well, hey, Lou Ferante, you're one of the kind, man. You're you're you're an interesting dude. You're fun to talk to and you're you're writing these books that are they're well-sourced and and cited so I'm I'm looking forward to to get in among on my shelf, man. As soon as I hang up the zoom here, I'm going to I'm going to go to school. So that's good. Appreciate you, man.

Speaker 0Yep, thanks for having me. I know once again, anybody has any questions, reads the books, wants to ask me anything, shoot me an email through my website, Lewisprothay.com. I will get around to it sometimes. It takes a couple of weeks, even if I'm busy, but I will get around to answering. And thank you for having me, Matt. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1I'll be JFK listeners. We'll be back next week with a recap and rebuttals episode, exclusively on Jack Ruby. Thanks a lot.