PART 6:FINAL JUDGMENT:LITTLE MAN'S LITTLE MAN .LANSKY &MARCELLO

By Michael Collins Piper
Chapter Ten 

Little Man's Little Man: 

Meyer Lansky & Carlos Marcello— 

Did the Mafia Kill JFK? 

Meyer Lansky's Louisiana front-man, Carlos Marcello, has become a favorite target for J.F.K assassination researchers who like to claim that "The Mafia Killed JFK." 

The fact is that Marcello's most formidable chief accuser, G.Robert Blakey,staff director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, had been on the payroll of a key figure in the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. 

Marcello was only one cog in the Lansky Syndicate. His key placement in New Orleans—scene of much of the preassassination planning—makes him the perfect fall guy. Marcello also had ties to Israel's allies in the CIA. There's a lot more to the Marcello story than meets the eye.

It was Lee Harvard Oswald's pathetic cry, "I'm just a patsy," that has become immortalized. Ironically, though, one of the most widely alleged JFK assassination masterminds—New Orleans' widely-publicized supposed "crime boss"—might himself be able to make that same claim. We are speaking, of course, of the colorful Carlos Marcello—nicknamed "Little Man"—a sobriquet he happened to share with Meyer Lansky. 

BLAMING MARCELLO 

One book, John W. Davis's Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, names Marcello as the likely mastermind of the JFK murder. Standing alone, with no further evidence such as that we have cited in the pages of Final Judgment, in this chapter and elsewhere, Davis' contention seems reasonable. But, as we've said, his conclusions are not based on the totality of all the evidence available to those who are interested in the big picture. 

DISTORTING THE TRUTH 

David Scheim, writing in Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy, likewise blames "the Mafia" for the JFK assassination and also points the finger at Carlos Marcello in particular. For whatever reason, however, Scheim is devoted to underplaying (even ignoring) the critical role of Meyer Lansky in the underworld. 

In Scheim's view, Lansky was little more than a bit player—this in direct contradiction to even standard histories of organized crime which, by virtue of reality, are forced to recognize Lansky's particular influence.

Scheim, in fact, goes to great lengths to suggest that Lansky was of little consequence in the whole scheme of things. He writes: "The late syndicate financier Meyer Lansky could take no action without the approval of Mafia superiors."338 This is simply not true in any sense whatsoever. That Scheim even suggests this indicates that he is determined to ignore the entire picture. 

Scheim notes, incorrectly, that Lansky's alleged "Mafia superiors" kept him under constant surveillance through one Jimmy "Blue Eyes" Alo whom Scheim describes as a "capo regime" in the Genovese Mafia family out of New York. 339 Alo was indeed closely associated with Lansky, but, in fact, was not only a close personal friend, but also a working partner. He was not, contrary to Scheim's bizarre concoction, a Mafia handler of Meyer Lansky. 

CLAY SHAW AND THE CIA 

Scheim's own determination to ignore the role of the intelligence community in the JFK assassination conspiracy—particularly that of the CIA—is also interesting. In his book Scheim goes to great lengths to portray New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as a tool of the Mafia and an associate of Carlos Marcello. He also comes down hard on Garrison's investigation of international businessman Clay Shaw. 

According to Scheim, "Equally bizarre was Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, who became his prime culprit. A retired director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, Shaw was a soft-spoken liberal who devoted most of his time to restoring homes in the Old French Quarter." 340 

What Scheim fails to note—and what he could not miss inasmuch as he is self-portrayed as a longtime JFK assassination researcher—is that Shaw was, indeed, involved with the 

CIA. IGNORING THE FACTS 

This was a fact well known among JFK assassination researchers at the time Scheim's book went to press. There is simply no rational excuse for Scheim's deliberate deletion of this critical fact. 

Be that as it may, in Chapter 15 we shall examine Shaw's central positioning in the conspiracy that involved not only the CIA and the Mafia and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate, but also Israel's Mossad. 

Obviously, in order to perpetuate the myth that "The Mafia Killed JFK," Scheim is forced to avoid the facts that damage his thesis. And this is precisely what he has done.

Scheim's own book (and the aforementioned work by John W. Davis) both rely heavily on a previously-released work, The Plot to Kill the President: Organized Crime Assassinated JFK by G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings. 

(Scheim's book, in fact, is hardly more than a re-write of much of the same material and, actually, constitutes little more than a history of the Mafia, available in many standard sources. Scheim's book, all in all, fails miserably in its attempt to lay the blame anywhere for that matter. 

(And in light of the facts that we are uncovering in the pages of Final Judgment it is probably worth noting that Scheim's publisher, Shapolsky Publishers, is an affiliate of an Israeli-owned company—a fact that could perhaps have something to do with the decision to promote a book pinning the assassination of JFK on "the Mafia.") 

That Scheim and Davis relied upon the Blakey/Billings work is unfortunate, particularly since this book comes from what can only be charitably described as suspect sources. 

Blakey, of course, was director of the House Assassinations Committee which concluded that there had probably been a conspiracy behind the president's assassination and that, more than likely, elements of the "Mafia" may have been been involved. 

SABOTAGING GARRISON 

Richard Billings, who served alongside Blakey in the House Committee investigation, was no stranger to the JFK assassination conspiracy. In fact, Billings had been the Life magazine editor who led a team from his magazine to New Orleans ostensibly to collaborate with then District Attorney Jim Garrison in his investigation into the JFK murder. 

Garrison notes, however, that Life, instead, did just the opposite. Life ran several major articles which linked Garrison to organized crime—to the Mafia—to Carlos Marcello, specifically, thereby discrediting Garrison to many who believed the tales.341 

As a consequence when Blakey and Billings teamed up to write the book based on their experiences with the House Assassinations Committee, they reserved harsh criticism for Garrison and suggested that he was pointing the finger, wrongly, at the intelligence community and, in effect covering up for Marcello's involvement in the crime. 

Billings, it also just happens, was an in-law of C. D. Jackson, the publisher of Life magazine whom investigative journalist Carl Bernstein has described as "[Life owner] Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA."342 Billings also—perhaps not coincidentally—played a recurring role in Life's coverage of CIA-backed Cuban exile raids on Castro's Cuba. 

ORGANIZED CRIME 'EXPERT' 

So it was that Blakey and Billings' work put much emphasis on Marcello as having been one of the prime movers in the conspiracy. Yet, Blakey's allegations about the role of "the Mafia" can only be described as suspect, to say the very least. There's much more to the story as we will see. 

A professor of law and the director of the Notre Dame University Institute on Organized Crime, Blakey is often loudly trumpeted by the media as one of the nation's leading authorities on "the Mafia." Previously a special prosecutor in the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Blakey is the author of the famous Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute that has become a major tool in federal organized crime prosecutions. 

Thus it is that Blakey's conclusions about the role of "the Mafia" (and specifically Carlos Marcello) in the JFK assassination conspiracy have received widespread recognition and credibility. However, just two years before he was named director of the House Assassinations Committee, Blakey had a different relationship with organized crime: he had been on the payroll of a top figure in the Lansky Syndicate.

BLAKEY'S LANSKY CONNECTION 

After Penthouse magazine had published an article alleging that the La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California was linked to the underworld, several of La Costa's founders filed a lawsuit against Penthouse. One of the plaintiffs in the La Costa case was Morris "Moe" Dalitz, a former Detroit and Cleveland bootlegger-turned-Las Vegas casino boss, who had longstanding and close personal and business ties with Meyer Lansky. 

Brought in as part of Dalitz's legal team was Robert Blakey himself. This was certainly an unusual position for a self-promoted "crime fighter" such as Blakey. The longtime crime fighter, in fact, provided an affidavit on Dalitz's behalf against Penthouse. 343 

Blakey's employer Dalitz was very much an integral part of the Lansky Syndicate. In Chapter 4 we learned that it was the notorious "Purple Gang" in Detroit that had put out a contract on the life of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the future president, during Prohibition for interfering in their "territory." Kennedy, as we saw, made contact with Chicago Mafia chieftain Sam Giancana who intervened on the elder Kennedy's behalf, convincing the Purple Gang to cancel the proposed "hit." At that time, in fact, one of the key leaders of the Purple Gang was none other than Moe Dalitz, an up-and-coming mob figure. 

DALITZ, SIEGEL AND LANSKY 

According to FBI organized crime expert William Roemer, "Moe Dalitz started his criminal career way back in the Prohibition Era. He had been one of the admirals in 'the Little Jewish Navy' in Detroit when, as a rum runner, he ferried booze across the Detroit River from Canada to quench the thirst of the many Motor City citizens who were eager to taste the whiskey, wine, and beer forbidden by the 'Noble Experiment.'"344 This was the beginning of a long, lasting, close working relationship between Lansky, "the chairman of the board of organized crime" and Morris Dalitz. 

In fact, according to Roemer, it was Dalitz who was the prime mover behind the Syndicate's move against Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Lansky's boyhood friend and fellow racketeer who was shot dead in 1947.

According to Roemer, it was Lansky who sent Dalitz to Las Vegas to inquire into the activities of Ben Siegel. Dalitz, reports Roemer, "was the main contributor to the growing opinion that everything was not on the up and up. His report was the major reason why Lansky, [Frank] Costello, et al, made their report to the [organized crime] assembly in Havana in December 1946 and later in June when it was finally decided to chop Bugsy."345 

In Chapter 13 we shall review the Lansky-Siegel connection further and examine the bizarre role that the colorful thug, Mickey Cohen, Siegel's successor as Lansky's West Coast henchman, played in Israel's intrigues against JFK and in the JFK assassination conspiracy. 

In fact, as a direct consequence of Seigel's assassination, Dalitz stepped in as Lansky's official liaison in Las Vegas, becoming the so-called "godfather of Las Vegas." However, it would be nearly thirty years later that Robert Blakey, the chief proponent of the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK" would end up on Morris Dalitz's team, proclaiming Dalitz innocent of any mob connections and directing attention away from any direct Lansky connections to the JFK assassination conspiracy. 

Unfortunately for Blakey, Dalitz and La Costa, Penthouse prevailed and beat back their libel suit and, in effect, repudiated Blakey's character reference on behalf of Dalitz and his associates. 

So it was that the chief proponent of the theory that "the Mafia Killed JFK" had lined up in defense of one of Meyer Lansky's closest associates— Moe Dalitz, a legendary figure in the underworld himself. 

Some seven months after Blakey and the House Assassinations Committee issued their report that "The Mafia Killed JFK"—a report that carefully and studiously ignored Lansky's high-level influence over "the Mafia"—the Wall Street Journal reported in September of 1979 that Dalitz had long been identified by federal authorities as an ongoing senior adviser to organized crime.346 This time Dalitz did not bring a libel suit. 

ISRAEL HONORS DALITZ 

Dalitz' public image, however, did not suffer as a consequence of the Penthouse victory in the libel suit or as a result of the report in the Wall Street Journal. Instead, in 1983 the aging mob figure and Las Vegas "philanthropist" was honored by the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L) of B'nai B'rith with its prestigious "Torch of Liberty Award." 

Evidently the A.D.L did not see any problem with giving its highest honor to one of the top leaders of organized crime. Dalitz's service to the cause of Israel was apparently deemed more significant than his activities in the underworld. And Dalitz was indeed an active supporter of Israel's cause. 

In fact, Dalitz himself was the key mid-West contact for the Sonneborn Institute—the Israeli arms smuggling entity—that we first encountered in Chapter 7 where we examined the long-standing ties of the Lansky Syndicate to Israel. So we can certainly understand why the ADL would be so eager to award Dalitz for his services.

In Chapter 17 we shall examine the immense influence that the A.D.L itself has on the American news media. We shall also see one instance of how a longtime A.D.L collaborator floated a "new" theory about the JFK assassination—a widely-publicized cover story that seems to have been orchestrated by Israel's friends at the CIA. 

For his own part, Dalitz's defender, Robert Blakey, clearly prefers to look at the Italian elements of the underworld, but no further. As we saw in Chapter 7 (and which we will discuss further in this chapter and elsewhere) the differences between "the Mafia" and organized crime as a whole are far more profound that Blakey would allow us to imagine.

BLAKEY AND THE CIA 

Blakey, likewise, has refused to acknowledge the role of American intelligence, specifically the CIA, in the JFK assassination. No wonder then that prominent JFK assassination researchers such as Mark Lane, writing in Plausible Denial, and Jim Marrs, writing in Crossfire—among many others—have commented critically on Blakey's close relationship with the CIA during the period of the House Assassinations Committee investigation. In his own book, Conspiracy, Anthony Summers documents—in frightening detail—the CIA's subversion of the House investigation which, it appears, was aided and abetted by Blakey himself 

Blakey himself did nothing to allay the suspicions of his critics by first clearing his own book with the CIA. The concluding paragraph of Blakey's book—which another JFK assassination researcher, Carl Oglesby, caustically remarked should have appeared on the opening pages rather than buried at the end of the book—read as follows: 

"Pursuant to agreement with the Select Committee on Assassinations, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation reviewed this book in manuscript form to determine that the classified information it contained had been properly released for publication and that no informant was identified. Neither the CIA nor the FBI warrants the factual material or endorses the views expressed." 347 

Thus, while Blakey was busy pointing the finger at Carlos Marcello and away from the CIA and its allies in the Israeli Mossad, the facts about the Lansky-Marcello relationship belie Blakey's claim that "the Mafia" was the driving force in the JFK assassination conspiracy. 

LOUISIANA FRONT MAN 

The fact remains that whatever role Carlos Marcello or any of his underlings played in either the JFK assassination or the cover-up, Marcello was nothing more than a front-man for the "boss of all bosses"—Israel's longtime patron, Meyer Lansky himself. Marcello was indeed, Little Man's Little Man. Lansky was, in fact, much, much bigger—in terms of power and influence—than Carlos Marcello would ever be, Marcello's fame and reputation notwithstanding.

To understand the fatal flaws in the Davis, Scheim, Blakey-Billings theories—and to underscore the thesis of Final Judgment—it is vital to remember this all-important fact. 

Interestingly, Davis himself makes clear that Marcello was, in fact, a protégé of Lansky. The author does not, however, place the significant emphasis on Lansky's superiority over Marcello that must be made in presenting any theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK." 

For the full story of the Lansky-Marcello relationship we are indebted to Hank Messick, the fearless investigative reporter who specialized in Organized Crime coverage. In his biography of Meyer Lansky, Messick described how Lansky picked Marcello out of relative obscurity and set up Louisiana's supposed "Mafia boss" in business. Messick told how Lansky (through his partner and longtime associate Frank Costello) first moved into Louisiana. 

Under heat from New York reform Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Lansky and Costello had decided that New Orleans was an ideal location to relocate their slot machine operations. Costello met in New York with then Louisiana Governor Huey Long who agreed to open up his state to Organized Crime. 

Lansky-Costello associate "Dandy Phil" Kastel was sent in to take charge of the project. However, it was Lansky himself who went to New Orleans to cut the final deal with Long. The two met at the Roosevelt Hotel which was owned by a mutual crony, Seymour Weiss. 348 

(This was not the first meeting between Lansky and Long, however. The two had first met at the 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago which nominated then-New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president. It was during that brokered convention that Lansky bribes, along with Long's support, enabled F.D.R to win his party's nomination. Lansky's longtime associate and primary link to the Italian underworld, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, described that momentous meeting in his historic posthumously-published memoirs.) 349 

THE LONG-LANSKY DEAL 

It was during their second fateful meeting that Long and Lansky cut a deal which sealed their fates irrevocably and which, in fact, ultimately led to Long's untimely demise at the hands of an assassin. Here was the deal: in return for allowing Lansky's syndicate to operate in Louisiana, Long agreed to take a $20,000 monthly kickback. Lansky's slot machines were installed by a company chartered for "charitable contributions." However, out of the first $800,000 made by Lansky and his cronies in New Orleans, widows and orphans got exactly $600. 350 

This cozy arrangement between Lansky's Organized Crime syndicate and Huey Long's powerful Louisiana political machine made possible the rise of Carlos Marcello. Lansky biographer Messick described the origins and nature of the Lansky-Marcello relationship as follows: "Lansky was smart enough, however, to recognize that even the innovation of slot  machines which paid off in mints as well as cash would not suffice forever. [Lansky's] brother Jake was listed as an officer of the Louisiana Mint Company, the new outfit controlling the slots, but something more was needed. 

"In the Algiers section of New Orleans, across the Mississippi, he found Carlos Marcello. Born in Tunis, he had come to New Orleans in 1910 and made a living in a variety of ways, none of them successful. Nor had he bothered to become a U.S. citizen. 

"Lansky gave Marcello a franchise for the Algiers section, allowing him to keep two-thirds of the slot profit. By 1940 he had 250 machines in operation and proved himself as an efficient businessman. Later he was given a piece of the plush Beverly Club, the biggest rug joint (a posh gambling casino) in the area and at that time second to the Beverly Hills Club outside Newport, Kentucky."351 

MARCELLO TOOK THE HEAT 

Messick's concluding comments regarding the Lansky-Marcello relationship, however, are probably the most significant: "As a front man, Marcello worked out perfectly. In years to come he was touted as the Mafia boss of Louisiana—despite his birth in Tunis—and resisted all efforts to deport or jail him. 

"With all the heat on Marcello, the role of Lansky was almost forgotten—exactly what Meyer wanted. Ultimately, Lansky was able to shift Kastel to Las Vegas and leave Marcello and Weiss to run New Orleans."352 

"Meyer Lansky once explained why he left New Orleans to Marcello and others to run. 'There was just too frigging much to do elsewhere,' he said." 353 

As Messick elaborated even further, if only to drive home the point: Even Marcello's famous Beverly Club was not, in reality, Marcello's personal fiefdom. According to Messick, "Costello and Kastel were partners, Marcello had a small piece, but Lansky was the real boss." 354 

Aaron Cohn, who was director of the New Orleans Crime Commission, lends credence to Messick's analysis of the relationship. According to Cohn, "The Commission had long been suspicious of the massiveness of Marcello's holdings—which were much too large to be controlled by a single don—even one as powerful as Marcello." 355 Marcello, in short, was indeed fronting for Meyer Lansky. 

All of this, of course, taken together, sheds a more accurate light on the truth about the Lansky connection and Carlos Marcello. 

LANSKY, MARCELLO & THE CIA 

There is also evidence that Marcello was working directly with the CIA in at least one other sphere of influence that also links Lansky, whose own connections with American intelligence we examined in Chapter 7 and which we will examine further in Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and Chapter 14. 

According to Sam and Chuck Giancana, in their biography of Chicago Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, "Marcello was a co-conspirator with the CIA in gunrunning operations and a fervent supporter of the anti-Castro exiles. It was an arrangement [Giancana] said more than once, aimed at returning Cuba to its pre-Castro glory—meaning its lucrative casinos and vice rackets." 356 

But there was another realm in which the Lansky-CIA-Marcello nexus had a close working relationship: the illicit traffic in narcotics. The Senate Committee on Government Operations report to the 88th Congress on "Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics" had pinpointed New Orleans—at that time—as having been the key distribution point for drugs coming into the United States. 

Most observers believe that one of Marcello's "legitimate" businesses, a shrimp-boat operation, was, in fact, part of the drug-smuggling—and gunrunning—network. 

(In Chapter 12 we shall see, in fact, that Lansky was the prime mover behind that drug network working in conjunction with the CIA.) 

Needless to say, Marcello's central positioning in New Orleans made it such that it was inevitable that the Mafia chieftain would have an inside track to gaining first-hand knowledge about developments—at least in New Orleans—in the JFK assassination conspiracy. 

MARCELLO, FERRIE, BANISTER & THE CIA 

After all, Marcello's personal pilot was CIA contract agent David Ferrie, (now widely known as a result of his portrayal in Oliver Stone's Hollywood extravaganza, JFK). Ferrie's still-undetermined part in the JFK assassination conspiracy, and his apparent association with alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is but another piece of the whole puzzle. 

It was Ferrie's associate, Guy Banister, whose New Orleans private detective agency (a conduit for CIA arms to the anti-Castro Cuban exiles) employed several other Marcello cronies. Banister, who had been with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and was later special-agent-in-charge of the Chicago office of the FBI, had re-located to New Orleans. 357 

According to the Giancanas, Banister had long been close to the Chicago Mafia and that it was their good offices that brought Banister into Marcello's sphere of influence when the former FBI man went to New Orleans, initially working for the city police department.358 

(During the summer of 1963 the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a creation of the CIA's chief liaison with the anti-Castro Cuban groups, E. Howard Hunt, also maintained offices in the same building as Banister. 359 We first met Hunt, of course, in Chapter 9 where we learned of a libel trial in which both Hunt and the CIA were directly implicated in the JFK assassination.) 

Banister, clearly, was the intermediary between the CIA and the Lansky/Marcello operation in New Orleans. And it was through his office that Lee Harvey Oswald, was being set up as the patsy. (In Chapter 11, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 we shall examine that aspect of the JFK assassination conspiracy further.) 

Without question, New Orleans and the Marcello fiefdom were an integral part of the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. But to suggest that Marcello was the driving force behind the JFK assassination conspiracy is to ignore the whole picture. 

LANSKY & THE LONG ASSASSINATION 

As a passing historical note, it is probably appropriate to refer to the demise of Huey Long and the role that Lansky and his associates played in that important political event. 

By 1935, Long had been elected to the Senate and had risen to national prominence. In fact, Long was generally considered a major threat to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1936 re-election chances. Long had made it clear that if he didn't run as a Democrat—or as a third party candidate—in 1936, he certainly intended to play a major part in that election, and not on FDR's side. 

This, obviously, was of major concern to FDR. Thus, a Justice Department investigation of Long and his finances was unleashed. Such an inquiry was dredging up Long's tangled financial arrangements and threatened to break the back of the very profitable machine that Long had assembled. There were more than a few Louisiana political figures and Long associates who were frightened of their impending demise alongside Long at the hands of federal prosecutors. 

As Messick notes—and this is ironic—it was in a Dallas, Texas hotel room that the federal authorities made the decision to indict Long. The colorful Louisiana Senator was shot that same day by a "lone assassin" who was himself promptly shot to pieces by Long's bodyguards. 

To this day there are myriad conspiracy theories relating to Long's murder. Some say that the alleged assassin never fired a shot—instead, that he swung a punch at Long and that the "murder weapon" was planted on the scene afterward by the bodyguards who wanted to cover up the fact that it was one of them who accidentally shot Long when firing at his assailant. There are those, however, who say that Long was, in fact, deliberately shot by one of his bodyguards. 

The Giancana family, in their biography of the Chicago Mafia boss, say that Sam Giancana later claimed that "Some of our friends in New York had him hit—worked it out with a New Orleans [Mafia] boss. They figured it out so it would look like a loony did it."360 

The real truth may never be known. Whatever the case, Long died in the hospital some hours after the shooting. What we do know is that Long's death removed from the scene a major threat not only to the Roosevelt administration, but to the Long machine which relied so heavily on the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. With Long out of the picture, the federal authorities gave up their interest in Louisiana and its murky political underworld. 

The evidence now indicates that Long's death could have been prevented. Hank Messick told the story: at a meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas at the Arlington Hotel, shortly after Long's death, Frank Costello filled Lansky in on the truth about Long's departure. "We could have saved him," Costello told Lansky, "but I didn't see much use in it. The doctors had their orders to let him die."361 

This apparently was Meyer Lansky's first major involvement in the assassination of an American political figure with whom Organized Crime had collaborated. It would not be the last time, however. 

That Lansky's lieutenant, Carlos Marcello had his own reasons for wanting John F. Kennedy out of the way cannot be doubted. The Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy had targeted Marcello repeatedly. 

John Davis's interesting biography of Marcello provides a detailed analysis of the Kennedy campaign against Marcello. No wonder Marcello made his famous oft-told exclamation, "Livarsi na petra di la scarpa" (Take the stone from my shoe.") Yet, such an emotional outburst does not an assassination order make. 

In fact, there is no evidence anywhere whatsoever that Marcello took any further affirmative action to have his order—if indeed one can call it an order—fulfilled. 

STALKING LANSKY THROUGH MARCELLO 

It's worth noting, in this regard, that Robert Kennedy's systematic prosecution and harassment of Marcello would have only been a logical first step in the Justice Department's ultimate prosecution of Meyer Lansky. 

This, of course, is a standard procedure in all similar organized crime prosecutions: first the underlings are targeted—then the boss. In this case, of course, it would have been the so-called "chairman of the board," Meyer Lansky. 

Seth Kantor, Jack Ruby's acquaintance and biographer, summarizes it well: "As Attorney General, [Robert F. Kennedy] got more indictments on members of America's criminal industry than had any previous prosecutor, pursuing them relentlessly. 

"Meyer Lansky, for instance, no longer was safe behind the bolted doors of that industry's executive suite. The Attorney General put together what was known inside the Justice Department as the OCD (Organized Crime Division) and was stalking Lansky's secret operations in the Bahamas and Las Vegas."362 

The assassination of John F. Kennedy and the demise of Robert Kennedy's campaign against organized crime as a direct consequence prevented this from happening. The end of the Kennedy war on organized crime was a major consequence—a major victory—for the organized crime fiefdom of Meyer Lansky.

Of course, as we have said, even if the JFK murder was strictly a "Mafia" operation—with no tentacles leading elsewhere—it would have been Lansky who ordered it from the start. 

Meyer Lansky was Carlos Marcello's immediate superior in the world of organized crime and not vice versa. There is simply no way of getting around Lansky's critical positioning in the center of the vast conspiracy. What we are demonstrating here is that the conspiracy reached above and beyond "the Mafia." And that is central to our thesis. 

LANSKY'S 'KOSHER NOSTRA' 

Interestingly, Ruby biographer Seth Kantor differentiated between what he called "Lansky's 'Kosher Nostra" and what the separately referred to as "the hot-blooded Sicilian Cosa Nostra." 363 Certainly, Carlos Marcello breathed a sigh of satisfaction when John F. Kennedy died in Dallas. However, Meyer Lansky was, of course, the ultimate beneficiary. 

Any major operation such as the assassination of a president—even if proposed by Marcello single-handedly—would have first had to have been cleared by Marcello through his boss, Meyer Lansky. Thus, it would have been Lansky himself who most certainly had to have given the go-ahead, even if the Kennedy assassination plot originated with Marcello alone. 

The evidence, of course, suggests, however, that Marcello and his associates in New Orleans were simply pawns in a more far-reaching conspiracy that originated elsewhere. Their proximity to Oswald and the New Orleans end of the conspiracy, however, makes them an easy target for those who seek to find a "Mafia" conspiracy behind the murder. 

WEASEL WORDS 

As noted previously, those very sources who point to Marcello as the mastermind of the JFK murder choose to ignore Marcello's secondary positioning to Meyer Lansky in the syndicate chain of command. Lansky linked Robert Blakey's House Assassinations Committee gingerly skirted around the issue, however. In its final report the committee concluded: 

"Given the far-reaching possible consequences of an assassination plot by the commission [i.e. the national `commission’ of Organized Crime], the committee found that such a conspiracy would have been the subject of serious discussion by members of the commission, and that no matter how guarded such discussions might have been, some trace of them would have emerged from the surveillance coverage [by federal authorities]. 

"It was possible to conclude, therefore, that it is unlikely that the national crime syndicate as a group, acting under the leadership of the commission, participated in the assassination of President Kennedy. 

"While the committee found it unlikely that the national crime syndicate was involved in the assassination, it recognized that a particular organized crime leader or a small combination of leaders, acting unilaterally might have formulated an assassination conspiracy without the consent of the commission." 364 

These are weasel words, to be sure. However, one could also conclude from the committee's presumption that if indeed Organized Crime did play some significant role in the assassination conspiracy, that it was not a conspiracy that originated with "the Mafia," for example. Perhaps then the conspiracy originated elsewhere. That, of course, is the conclusion presented in Final Judgment. 

Unwittingly, then, the House Committee has provided us even further basis for the conclusions drawn here. 

LANSKY NOT MENTIONED 

The House Committee report had nothing to say about the LanskyMarcello connection. This is par for the course in standard accounts of the JFK assassination which promote the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK." What is also particularly interesting is that Robert Lacey's Lansky biography, Little Man, never once mentions Lansky's sponsorship of Marcello, nor does Marcello's name appear once in the book. The New Orleans connection is barely mentioned at all, and only in passing. Was Marcello—who even the FBI has said headed "the first family" of the Mafia—that unimportant? 

Could it be that because Marcello's name has been repeatedly linked to the JFK assassination that for Lacey—a very friendly biographer who worked closely with Lansky's family—to bring up Marcello's much-abused name would obviously draw in the Lansky connection to the JFK assassination? 

Is it possible that Marcello and his associates such as David Ferrie were deliberately drawn into the periphery of the assassination plot in order to deliberately plant the possibility that the blame for the assassination could be laid upon Marcello and the Mafia—in the event, perhaps, that the image of Lee Harvey Oswald as a "pro-Castro agitator" failed to work? 

This is indeed a possibility and would fit firmly into the long-standing Israeli Mossad policy of using "false flags" in its criminal endeavors. 

Clearly, there's a lot more to the relationship between Meyer Lansky and key "suspects" in the JFK assassination than meets the eye. All of which, again, points toward Lansky's central role in the international conspiracy which we document.

next
Cuban Love Song: 
Meyer Lansky, the Mafia, 
the CIA and the Mossad and 
the Castro Assassination Plots

Footnotes
Chapter Ten Little Man's Little Man 
338 David E. Scheim. Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1988), p. 120. 
339 Ibid. 
340 Ibid., p.48. 
341 Jim Garrison. On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), p. 163-164. 
342 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 55. 
343 Mark Lane. Plausible Denial. (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991), p. 34. 
344 William Roemer. War of the Godfathers.(New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1990), p. 53. 
345 Ibid., p. 55. 
346 Wm. Pepper. Orders to Kill. (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), p. 63. 
347 G. Robert Blakey & Richard N. Billings. The Plot to Kill the President: Organized Crime Assassinated JFK—The Definitive Story. (New York: Times Books, 1981), p. 401. 
348 Hank Messick, Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), pp. 82-83. 
349 Martin A. Gosch & Richard Hammer. The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1974), pp. 156-157. 
350 Messick, Ibid. 
351 Ibid., pp. 86-87. 
352 Ibid., p. 87. 
353 Ibid. 
354 Ibid., p. 129. 
355Robert D. Morrow. The Senator Must Die: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. (Santa Monica: CA: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 16. 
356 Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 298. 
357 Morrow p. 30. 
358 Giancana, p. 255. 
359Anthony Summers. Conspiracy. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980), p. 316. 
360 Giancana, p. 63. 
361 Messick, p. 84. 
362 Seth Kantor. Who Was Jack Ruby? (New York: Everest House, 1978), p. 28. 
363 Ibid 
364 House Select Committee on Assassinations. The Final Assassinations Report. (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), p. 204.