by Peter Dale Scott
http://www.motherbird.com/deep_politics.html
Book review
by Jodey Bateman
August 5, 2009
This is the best book so far on the assassination of President John
Kennedy. Peter Dale Scott, the author, is a former Canadian diplomat
and professor of English at the University of California, which
published this book. Scott makes clear why after over 40 years, the
Kennedy assassination still affects our lives.
Scott says that at this point it is not possible to say what specific
individuals plotted to kill Kennedy. However, there is publicly
available information, easy to obtain, on why a much larger group of
individuals was willing to stage an official cover-up to make it
appear that the Kennedy assassination was simply a horrible accident
without political significance.
Scott is not accusing any of the people involved in the cover-up of
being part of the assassination plot. but he does say if we
understand why they were so unwilling to do a serious public
investigation of the facts around the assassination, we will
understand why Kennedy was killed and what social forces the
assassination came from.
To start with, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, was in
charge of investigations for the commission his friend President
Lyndon Johnson set up, supposedly to find the facts about Kennedy's
death. The commission was headed by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court. The Warren Commission's report asks was Jack Ruby,
who killed Kennedy's alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, connected
with organized crime? The Commission says no. Its investigation,
conducted by Hoover's FBI, asked Ruby's long-time friend Dave Yaras
if Ruby was connected with the mob. Yaras said no. That was enough
for the commission.
The commission's report does not mention that in 1949 this same Dave
Yaras was on trial for an important mob hit when the main witness
against him was murdered and Yaras went free.
Yet the word of such a person was enough to keep the commission from
investigating the possible role of organized crime in the Kennedy
assassination.
To Peter Dale Scott, the question is not what the role of organized
crime was. What he asks is why did the director of the FBI and the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court take the word of someone like Dave
Yaras seriously? Or pretend to take it seriously?
For 20 years, up until shortly before John F. Kennedy became
president, FBI Director Hoover denied that there was any such thing
as organized crime. Although the FBI kept major Mafia figures under
surveillance, they were seldom prosecuted at all, usually not by the FBI.
In return for not being prosecuted, the executives of organized
crime, as we may call them, gave the FBI tips that led to the capture
of small-time crooks who had displeased them. Jack Ruby was a low
level organized crime bureaucrat. According to Ruby's FBI file, which
was not released until 15 years after the Kennedy assassination, he
was the one who gave permission for a shipment of heroin to pass
through Dallas. Yet the FBI had him down as a potential criminal
informant, one who was willing to give them information about illegal
activity in Dallas. Ruby was never prosecuted for his role in the heroin deal.
It is not only law enforcement agencies who developed such
relationships of mutual benefit with organized crime. During World
War II, the Office of Special Services, which became the CIA, got
powerful Mafia figures in prison in the US to send messages to Mafia
leaders in Sicily asking them to prepare the way for landings by
Allied troops. In return these Mafia figures were released from
prison and deported to Italy after the war.
The end of the war did not end friendly Mafia contacts with the US
government. After Mafia don Vito Genovese was deported to Italy he
became an interpreter for the US occupying army and obtained American
military trucks which he used for his black marketing activities.
Relationships between organized crime and American intelligence went
on into the Kennedy administration. Mobsters such as Meyer Lansky and
Santos Trafficante lost millions when the Cuban revolution
confiscated their gambling casinos in 1959. After Kennedy became
president in 1961 organized crime supplied money and personnel to
help the anti-Castro movement which the CIA organized.
Organized crime's contributions to the CIA were summed up as helping
a project to assassinate Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
Actually, as Castro never seemed to get killed, the assassination
plot seems to have been simply a big "get out of jail free card" for
the organized crime figures involved. As long as they could say they
were involved in a top-secret plot against Castro for national
security, the CIA would try to keep them from being prosecuted for
criminal acts.
Peter Dale Scott calls long-term relationships which cannot be
officially acknowledge (such as the CIA's relationship with organized
crime) "deep politics." So-called legitimate business also benefits
from deep politics. Business executives can use contacts with
organized crime to get things done quickly that would take too long
by legal channels.
A perfect example of deep politics between business, government and
organized crime is the career of Dallas oil millionaire Clint
Murchison whose money was important in building the career of Lyndon
Johnson first as Senator and then as Kennedy's vice-president.
One of the main investors in Murchison's oil company was Mafia figure
Gerardo Catena. Murchison was also a close friend of Lyndon Johnson's
next door neighbor, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Murchison let
Hoover take free vacations at Rancho del Charro, a resort which he
owned. While such blatant Mafia figures as Gerardo Catena did not
take their holidays at Rancho del Charro, others with strong but less
obvious organized crime ties such as Sid Levison did.
One of the humorous oil men who vacationed at Rancho del Charro said
that Murchison exhibited Hoover to his friends at the resort to show
them that Murchison "had the sheriff on his side."
This meant that any deals they wanted to make with Murchison and his
organized crime contacts would not be prosecuted.
Murchinson was the co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys with Gordon
McLendon, the owner of radio and TV station KRLD in Dallas. Jack Ruby
said that McLendon was one of his six best friends in Dallas. Ruby
arranged for illegal gambling games for McLendon and his associates.
Twelve years after the Kennedy assassination McLendon started the
Association of former Intelligence Agents with Clare Booth Luce,
widow of Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life. McLendon and Luce
and the former intelligence agents who joined them were trying to
stop the investigations chaired by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of
Idaho, which exposed the CIA plots with the Mafia against the life of
Fidel Castro.
While none of these powerful and wealthy people such as McLendon and
Murchison may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination, they
were involved in deep political relationships which were threatened
by President Kennedy.
The Kennedy administration doubled the number of prosecutions of
organized crime. After the missile crisis of 1962, in return for the
Soviet Union withdrawing missiles from Cuba, Kennedy shut down the
air strips and boat docks in Florida from which Cuban exiles and
American mobsters raided Cuba. Mafia figures could no longer claim
immunity from prosecution for being part of a plot to kill Castro.
Kennedy's murder removed the threat to a host of deep political
relationships. But any honest investigation of his death would have
exposed these relationships to the embarrassment of many very powerful people.
So a real investigation never occurred. The beneficiaries of deep
politics who were also beneficiaries of the Kennedy assassination,
whether they took part or not passed their wealth and power on to
heirs who are wealthy and powerful today.
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