FINAL JUDGMENT
The Missing Link in the
JFK Assassination Conspiracy
By MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Chapter Twelve
An Opiate for the Masses:
The Lansky-CIA-Southeast
Asian Drug Pipeline
and
the Mossad Connection
Tampa, Florida Mafia boss Santo Trafficante, Jr. has
frequently been mentioned as a possible mastermind behind
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The media has also
portrayed Trafficante as the prime mover behind the
international heroin racket operating out of Southeast Asia.
However, the truth is that it was Meyer Lansky who was the
primary architect of the global drug operations. Trafficante
was his immediate underling.
The Lansky heroin pipeline was conducted through the
CIA-backed French Corsican Mafia in Marseille and used the
CIA's covert activities in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam
War as a cover for its operations. In fact, all the evidence
suggests that the drug smuggling was a joint CIA-Organized
Crime venture. What's more, Lansky's chief drug money
laundering bank in Switzerland was a Mossad operation.
Thus, the Lansky Crime Syndicate/Mafia connections with
Israel's allies in the CIA are even deeper and more intimate
than we have been led to believe.
Veteran JFK assassination researcher Peter Dale Scott has suggested
that "the flood of drugs into this country since World War II was one of
the major 'unspeakable' secrets leading to the ongoing cover-up of the
Kennedy assassination."385 Scott is correct, for any careful, in-depth
examination of the global drug racket shows conclusively that Israel's allies in
the Lansky crime syndicate and the CIA are very much a part of the
international drug racket.
Students of the global drug trade are indebted to Professor Alfred
McCoy of the prestigious University of Wisconsin at Madison for his
ground-breaking expose of the real origins of the modern-day drug crisis.
First published in 1972—despite the strongest efforts of the CIA to block
its publication—McCoy's classic work, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast
Asia, has withstood the test of time.
In 1992 McCoy re-issued the work under the title The Politics of
Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. The new edition is an
equally remarkable work which not only includes additional findings
uncovered in the subsequent 20 years since its initial publication, but also a
valuable preface in which McCoy outlines the CIA operations against his
research and the publication of the book.
THE DRUG BOSS
Although the Establishment media has repeatedly pinpointed Santo
Trafficante, Jr., Mafia boss of Tampa, as the brains behind the Southeast
Asian drug traffic, McCoy makes it very clear that Trafficante was simply
operating as Lansky's underling. McCoy describes the origins of the
Lansky-Trafficante relationship:
"During the 1930's Meyer Lansky 'discovered' the Caribbean for
northeastern syndicate bosses and invested their illegal profits in an
assortment of lucrative gambling ventures. In 1933 Lansky moved into the
Miami Beach area and took over most of the illegal off-track betting and a
variety of hotels and casinos. He was also reportedly responsible for
organized crime's decision to declare Miami a 'free city' (that is, not subject
to the usual rules of territorial monopoly).
"Following his success in Miami, Lansky moved to Havana for three
years, and by the beginning of World War II he owned the Hotel Nacional's
casino and was leasing the municipal racetrack from a reputable New York
bank.
"Burdened by the enormous scope of his holdings, Lansky had to
delegate much of his responsibility for daily management to local gangsters.
One of Lansky's earliest associates in Florida was Santo Trafficante, Sr., a
Sicilian-born Tampa gangster. Trafficante had earned his reputation as an
effective organizer in the Tampa gambling rackets and was already a figure
of some stature when Lansky first arrived in Florida. By the time Lansky
returned to New York in 1940, Trafficante had assumed responsibility for
Lansky's interests in Havana and Miami.
TRAFFICANTE THE FRONT MAN
"By the early 1950's Trafficante had himself become such an important
figure that he delegated his Havana concessions to Santo Trafficante, Jr., the
most talented of his six sons. The younger Santo's official position in
Havana was that of manager of the Sans Souci Casino, but he was far more
important than his title indicates.
"As his father's financial representative, and ultimately Meyer
Lansky's, Santo Jr. controlled much of Havana's tourist industry and
became quite close to the pre-Castro dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Moreover,
it was reportedly his responsibility to receive bulk shipments of heroin from
Europe and forward them through Florida to New York and other major
urban centers, where the distribution was assisted by the local Mafia
bosses." 386
LANSKY MOVES TO THE TOP
Lansky biographer Hank Messick makes it very clear that it was
Trafficante Jr. who played a key role in ensuring Lansky's dominance over
syndicate gambling in Cuba. It was Trafficante who helped orchestrate the
assassination in 1957 of Lansky rival, New York Mafia figure Albert
Anastasia, the most vocal Italian Mafia critic of Lansky's growing influence in the Cuban gambling rackets. Anastasia's removal from the scene was
vital to Lansky's ultimate dominance.
Messick notes that Trafficante got caught in the middle between Albert
Anastasia and Lansky over the Havana gambling. Not only did Trafficante
opt to abandon his fellow Italian Mafia figure, but Trafficante also swore a
blood oath Mafia-style, assuring Lansky of his support.
"So long as the blood flows in my body," he intoned solemnly, "do I,
Santo Trafficante, swear allegiance to the will of Meyer Lansky and the
organization he represents. If I violate this oath, may I burn in hell
forever."387
He signed it in his own blood. It was shortly thereafter, on October 25,
1957, that Anastasia was shot dead after what he wrongly believed to have
been a friendly meeting in New York with Trafficante. Anastasia should
have known what was coming. After all, according to Messick, he had,
shortly before, told his fellow Mafia figures what he thought of them: "You
bastards have sold yourselves to the Jews."388
(Interestingly enough, Lansky's friendly biographical cheerleader,
Robert Lacey, never mentions the Lansky-Anastasia stand-off that led to the
Lansky rival's murder.)
Organized crime authority Dan Moldea summarized the Lansky-Trafficante
relationship best and most succinctly: "Trafficante was deeply
devoted to Lansky." 389
THE MAFIA UNDER FIRE
It was shortly after Albert Anastasia's murder that public attention
began focusing on Organized Crime as a result of media publicity. It was
not, in fact, until the infamous Mafia conclave at Appalachian, New York,
in 1957 that the media began hyping "the Mafia" as a major force in
organized crime.
Americans had long been aware of legendary mobsters such as Al Capone
and Lucky Luciano, but general awareness that a national crime syndicate did
indeed exist was not commonplace.
Following a police raid of the Appalachian conference attended
exclusively by top Mafia figures from around the country, Trafficante
included—public attention began focusing on "the Mafia"—thanks to the
media.
The official story has always been that a local policeman just happened to
stumble upon the conclave at the home of Mafia figure Joseph Barbara. The
officer called in reinforcements and a major "bust" took place, following a
heated chase of the Mafia figures through the briars and brambles of the rural
countryside.
However, according to Hank Messick, the police had been tipped off by
a Lansky associate that the meeting was about to take place. Messick
described the consequences of the Appalachian raid:
"The delegates were scattered before any alliance could be reached. And
the publicity caused the greatest heat since the 1930's. It focused not only on the men who attended the session but on the entire Mafia. What's more,
it continued for well over a year as state and federal officials tried to find
some charge to stick against the delegates they had captured or identified.
Not only were Mafia leaders immobilized by the continuing publicity, but
also they were demoralized. Almost instinctively they rallied to Lansky and
other non-Mafia syndicate leaders for advice and assistance."390
(Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the attorneys who played a key role
in the Appalachian investigation was one Justin Finger. It was Finger who
later went on to become chief of the "civil rights division" of the Lansky financed
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the primary intelligence
and propaganda arm of Israel's Mossad in the United States.)
Despite all this, as Messick notes, Trafficante himself stood to benefit.
According to Messick: "Trafficante was a little annoyed at the publicity he
received—after being picked up with the rest—but was soon mollified when
he discovered he was now being hailed as the Mafia boss of Florida by the
press. Glory was as important as loot to the Mafia mind."391
Clearly, a close working relationship between Lansky and Trafficante
had been cemented. It continued for many years, up to and including—and
beyond—the critical year of 1963. It was in 1970, however, that Lansky,
preparing to take refuge in Israel, turned over most of his responsibilities to
his subordinate, Santo Trafficante, Jr. By this time Lansky was aging and in
ill health. He was ready to move into retirement.
In 1968—just two years earlier—Trafficante had journeyed to Saigon,
Hong Kong and Singapore. It was there in the exotic East that he was
solidifying the longtime relationship between Lansky and the CIA in the
international drug racket.
WHO'S THE BOSS?
Here we turn once again to Professor Alfred McCoy for an elucidation
of Lansky's ties with the CIA in the Southeast Asian drug racket and the
covert part it played in the CIA's involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
McCoy writes:
"After Mafia kingpin Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was deported from the
United States in 1946, he charged his longtime associate Meyer Lansky
with the responsibility of managing his financial empire. Lansky also
played a key role in organizing Luciano's heroin syndicate: he supervised
smuggling operations, negotiated with Corsican heroin manufacturers, and
managed the collection and concealment of the enormous profits
"Lansky's control over the Caribbean and his relationship with the
Florida-based Trafficante family were of particular importance, since many
of the heroin shipments passed through Cuba or Florida on their way to
America's urban markets. For almost twenty years the Luciano-Lansky-Trafficante
partnership remained a major feature of the international heroin
traffic." 392
McCoy notes further: "There is reason to believe that Meyer Lansky's
1949-1950 European tour was instrumental in promoting Marseilles's heroin industry. After crossing the Atlantic in a luxury liner, Lansky visited Lucky]Luciano in Rome, where they discussed the narcotics trade. He then
traveled to Zurich and contacted prominent Swiss bankers through John
Pullman, an old friend from the rum running days.
"These negotiations established the financial labyrinth that organized
crime used for decades to smuggle its enormous gambling and heroin profits
out of the country into numbered Swiss bank accounts without attracting
the notice of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
"Pullman was responsible for the European end of Lansky's financial
operation: depositing, transferring, and investing the money when it arrived
in Switzerland."393
THE MOSSAD DRUG LINK
As we noted in Chapter 7, Lansky biographer Hank Messick himself
pointed out that, ultimately, Pullman's chief Swiss depository for Lansky's
drug money was the Banque de Credit International (B.C.I), established in
1959. This bank, as we have seen, was the brainchild of longtime Israeli
Mossad officer Tibor Rosenbaum. In Chapter 15 we shall examine the
Lansky-Rosenbaum-BCI link to the JFK assassination in detail.
According to Messick, "Once safely deposited in numbered accounts at
B.C.I and other banks, it could be invested in the stock market or returned in
the form of loans to individuals and corporations controlled by the National
Crime Syndicate." 394 (Pullman, who had moved from Lansky's base in
Miami beach to Montreal was Lansky's lieutenant in charge of that phase of
the international drug operations.)
THE CORSICAN MAFIA
McCoy describes Lansky's European sojourn further: "After making the
financial arrangements with Pullman in Switzerland, Lansky traveled
through France, where he met with high-ranking Corsican syndicate leaders
on the Riviera and in Paris. After lengthy discussions, Lansky and the
Corsicans are reported to have arrived at some sort of agreement concerning
the international heroin traffic.
"Soon after Lansky returned to the United States, heroin laboratories
began appearing in Marseilles. In future years, U.S. narcotics experts were
to estimate that the majority of America's heroin supply was being
manufactured in Marseilles.” 395
McCoy notes that the European phase of the Lansky drug operations
gradually began moving out of the hands of Lansky's associates in the
Sicilian Mafia to the Marseilles area in France, under the domination of the
Corsican Mafia. 396
All of this took place at the same time Israel's friend in the American
O.S.S (and later the CIA), James Angleton was engaged in the region,
assisting the emigration of European Jews to Palestine. (In Chapter 8 we examined Angleton's role in these affairs further, including his links to the
Corsican Mafia and to B.C.I founder Tibor Rosenbaum.)
LANSKY, THE CIA AND
THE CORSICAN MAFIA
McCoy explains how the CIA had developed ties with Lansky's
partners in the Corsican Mafia: "The CIA had sent agents and a
psychological warfare team to Marseilles, where they dealt directly with
Corsican syndicate leaders through the Guerini brothers Antoine and
Barthelemy, leaders of the Corsican Mafia." 397
The CIA's operatives supplied arms and money to Corsican gangs for
assaults on Communist picket lines and harassment of important union
officials. The communists had amassed much political clout in the region
and the CIA utilized the Corsican Mafia to shatter the communists'
strength.
"The Guerinis gained enough power and status from their role in
smashing the 1947 strike to emerge as the new leaders of the Corsican
underworld. While the CIA was instrumental in restoring the Corsican
underworld's political influence, it was not until the 1950 dock strike that
the Guerinis gained enough power to take control of the Marseille
waterfront.
"The combination of political influence and control of the docks created
the ideal environment for the growth of Marseilles's heroin laboratories—
fortuitously at the same time that Mafia boss Lucky Luciano was seeking an
alternative source of heroin supply." 398
THE VIETNAMESE DRUG LINK
As McCoy notes further, the CIA had also began flexing its muscles in
Southeast Asia, where the drug trade originated. McCoy describes the CIA's
relationship with the indigenous drug racketeers:
"In Laos from 1960 to 1975, the CIA created a secret army of 30,000
Hmong tribesmen to battle Laotian Communists near the border with North
Vietnam. Since the Hmong's main cash crop was opium, the CIA adopted a
complicitous posture toward the traffic, allowing the Hmong commander,
General Vang Po, to use the CIA's Air America to collect opium from his
scattered highland villages.
"In late 1969, the CIA's various covert action clients opened a network
of heroin laboratories in the Golden Triangle. In their first years of
operation, these laboratories exported high-grade no. 4 heroin to U.S. troops
fighting in Vietnam. After their withdrawal, the Golden Triangle
laboratories exported directly to the United States, capturing one-third of the
American heroin market." 399
Thus it was that the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate had
developed a close working relationship with the CIA.
Sam Giancana's family biographers stated flatly that Giancana claimed
that in exchange for the underworld services of the Organized Crime Syndicate, "the CIA looked the other way—allowing over $100 million a
year in illicit drugs to flow through Havana into the United States.
"It was an arrangement similar to all the rest they'd made, he said. The
CIA received 10 percent of the take on the sale of narcotics, which they
utilized 'for their undercover slush fund.' Such illegally earned monies were
stashed away by the CIA in Swiss, Italian, Bahamian, and Panamanian
accounts." 400
Further, according to the Giancanas, when Sam Giancana was engaged
in various and sundry rackets he conventionally shared his profits with other
Organized Crime bosses depending on the region or activity in question.
"Largely," they pointed out, "Giancana's international deals involved
Lansky and whomever else they needed to take care of at the time."401
The two primary CIA figures in Southeast Asia during the time of the
Lansky-CIA drug smuggling collaboration were, interestingly enough,
Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines. Shackley was chief of station for
the CIA in Laos. Clines served as Shackley's immediate deputy. 402
As we saw in Chapter 11, it was Shackley and Clines who had
supervised the CIA's Operation Mongoose, the code name for the CIA/Lansky
Crime Syndicate assassination plots against Castro, operating at a
headquarters on the University of Miami campus. It was this operation that
came to be known as JM/Wave.
Operation Mongoose, it turns out, was under the direction of General
Edward Lansdale whom, assassination researcher Bernard Fensterwald notes
later "reportedly cultivated a close relationship with the Corsican Mafia
during his controversial service in Vietnam." 403
Interestingly enough, it was Shackley and Clines—upon "retiring" from
the CIA who set up an arms dealing agency—the Egyptian Transport
Service Company. 404 "This firm worked closely with Israel's Mossad figure
Shaul Eisenberg's Aviation Trade and Service Company ." 405 Eisenberg,
in fact, was a major player in Israel's nuclear arms development program—the
very operation that created the crisis between John F. Kennedy and Israel.
The plot clearly comes full circle.
The role of Lansky in all of these activities, however, has been
carefully ignored, even by writers—Alfred McCoy, the notable exception—
who have exposed the CIA's role in the global drug racket.
COVERING UP
THE LANSKY CONNECTION
In Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, journalist
Jonathan Kwitny takes several pages to outline the CIA-backed drug
trafficking networks operating out of Southeast Asia and using the CIA allied
Corsican crime families as a central distribution source.
Kwitny points out the role of Charles "Lucky" Luciano in establishing
the initial networks which also utilized the Sicilian crime families in the
Mediterranean. Kwitny even acknowledges Alfred McCoy's work as "the
best published documentation of all of this." 406
However, interestingly enough, Kwitny does not once mention Meyer
Lansky's pivotal role in formally establishing the Luciano-launched global
drug network, despite the fact that Kwitny cited McCoy as "the best
published" source on the history of the drug network. Nor does Kwitny
make reference to Santo Trafficante, Jr., Lansky's chief lieutenant and
primary heir in the global drug racket.
This is all particularly interesting when one realizes that in the recent
furor over the JFK assassination conspiracy (resulting from the release of
Oliver Stone's JFK film) that Kwitny himself is one of the primary
promoters of the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK." According to
Kwitny, the principal architect of the crime was, by his estimation, more
than likely New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello—who, as we have
seen, was one of Lansky's local front men.407 Evidently Kwitny—like
others who claim that "The Mafia Killed JFK"—doesn't want to
acknowledge that Meyer Lansky even existed.
It is also worth mentioning as well that Lansky's friendly biographer,
Robert Lacey, writing in his 1991 biography of Lansky goes to great
lengths to suggest that Lansky had no part in the international drug racket.
This, as we have seen, is par for the course as far as Lacey's attitude toward
Lansky is concerned.
However, Rachel Ehrenfeld, one of the world's leading experts on the
drug combine and its connections with global terrorism, writes in her book
Evil Money that "there exists reliable evidence to the contrary. “ 408
She cites an interview she conducted with a former congressional
special investigator for organized crime. She reports that she was "reassured
that the evidence for Lansky's illegal dealings was ample and that Lacey
must have been the victim of his close dealings with Lansky's former
associates and family."409
FRENCH ASSASSINS?
Considering the CIA's alliance with Lansky's allies in the Corsican
Mafia, it is interesting to consider here that there are those who believe that the
Corsican Mafia or other French elements may have played a role in the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. There is evidence, indeed, that at least
one French mercenary did show up in Dallas the day JFK was slain.
Writing in Reasonable Doubt, Henry Hurt explores one aspect of the
so-called "French connection" in some detail. He describes the possible role
of a French OAS terrorist in the assassination.
As we saw in Chapter 6 and in Chapter 9, the O.A.S was comprised of
CIA-backed French forces who opposed granting independence to the French
colony in Arab Algeria. This led them into direct confrontation with French
President Charles DeGaulle who granted Algerian independence.
As a member of the Senate, as we saw in Chapter 4, John F. Kennedy
had called for Algerian independence, in opposition to the O.A.S. Israel itself
had a stake in continued French domination of Algeria in that French occupation of Algeria was a direct obstacle in the path of Arab nationalism. (In
Chapter 15 we will examine Israel's covert ties to the OAS.)
Hurt cites a CIA document discovered in 1977 by Mary Ferrell, Dallas
researcher: "The document, dated April 1, 1964, reported that the French intelligence
service wanted help in locating one Jean Souetre, a French OAS terrorist
considered a threat to the safety of French President Charles DeGaulle.
"The document asserted that Jean Souetre was in Fort Worth, Texas, on
the morning of November 22, 1963. That morning President Kennedy also was
in Fort Worth. A few hours later, John F. Kennedy was in Dallas, where, at
12:30 p.m. he was assassinated. Also in Dallas that afternoon was Jean Souetre.
"Within forty-eight hours of Kennedy's death, according to the query
from the French, Jean Souetre was picked up by U.S. authorities in Texas. He
was immediately expelled from the United States. French intelligence wanted
to ascertain whether he was expelled to Canada or Mexico.
"The French also wanted to know why the U.S. authorities had expelled
Souetre. The simple purpose was to ensure the safety of President DeGaulle on
his pending trip to Mexico." 410
Hurt notes that the original document also noted that Souetre used the
names Michel Roux and Michel Mertz. Roux happened to be in Fort Worth on
November 22, having entered the country on November 19 and leaving at Laredo,
Texas on December 6. He was not expelled. When questioned later, Souetre said
that Mertz was an old enemy who often used his name and may have been
trying to implicate him in misdeeds.
THE HUNT CONNECTION
Interestingly enough, it was CIA man E. Howard Hunt (whom we first
met in Chapter 9) who was one of the CIA's point men in the dealings with
Souetre and OAS intelligence 411 That the two may have been in Dallas—
perhaps even together—during the time of the JFK assassination is intriguing, to
say the very least and yet another of the details that, taken together, demonstrate
continuing intimate connections between persons and institutions that have
(elsewhere) been repeatedly linked to the JFK assassination conspiracy.
In Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 we shall see that Israeli Mossad/ Lansky--
linked elements in New Orleans and elsewhere funneled money to the O.A.S for a
1962 assassination attempt against Charles DeGaulle and that, indeed, these same
elements are tied directly to the JFK assassination.
TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Professor Alfred McCoy summarizes the covert links between the CIA and
organized crime around the world:
"Since prohibition of narcotics in the 1920's, alliances between drug
brokers and intelligence agencies have protected the global narcotics traffic.
Given the frequency of such alliances, there seems a natural attraction
between intelligence agencies and criminal syndicates . . . Both are
practitioners of what one retired CIA operative has called the 'clandestine
arts'—the basic skill of operating outside the normal channels of civil
society. Among all the institutions of modern society, intelligence agencies
and criminal syndicates alone maintain large organizations capable of
carrying out covert operations without fear of detection." 412
Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana's family biographers have written of
Giancana's own elaboration on this relationship. They described how
Giancana showed his brother an ancient Roman coin and declared: "Look,
this is one of the Roman gods. This one has two faces . . . two sides.
That's what we are, the Outfit and the CIA—two sides of the same
coin: 413
ISRAEL, THE CIA AND
THE DRUG COMBINE
All the evidence we have covered here suggests that the CIA and the
Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate were indeed partners in many
areas of mutual concern—not only in Cuba and in the Southeast Asian drug
racket—but also in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
And as we saw in Chapter 6, Lansky's allies in Israel stood much to
benefit from American involvement in Southeast Asia.
While Israel was using America's engagement in and preoccupation
with the Vietnam conflict as a means whereby Israel could flex its muscle in
the Middle East, the Lansky narcotics network was using its partnership
with the CIA during the Vietnam War as a cover for its drug-smuggling.
And as we have seen in Chapter 8, the CIA and Israel itself had long
and close ties equally as incestuous of those of the Lansky Organized Crime
Syndicate and Israel. That Israel had its own difficulties with John F.
Kennedy we have already seen. Likewise with the Mafia and the Lansky
Syndicate. In Chapter 9 we reviewed the CIA's own problems with John F.
Kennedy. Clearly, this alliance of forces against JFK was such that there
was really no way John F. Kennedy could have ever completed his first term
in the White House.
Chapter Thirteen
Israel's California Connection:
Mickey Cohen and the
JFK Assassination Conspiracy
The role of Meyer Lansky's West Coast Henchman — longtime
Israeli loyalist Mickey Cohen—in the JFK assassination conspiracy
is one of history's little-known stories. Cohen — who was one of
Jack Ruby's idols — apparently had a direct hand in the initial stages of
Israeli machinations against John F. Kennedy. Evidence
suggests also that the death of film actress Marilyn Monroe
was linked, in fact, to the Israeli connection in the JFK
assassination conspiracy.
When Mickey Cohen's name has appeared in numerous books and
monographs relating to the JFK murder, it has only been in passing.
Cohen, it would appear on the surface, deserves mention if only because of
his involvement in Organized Crime which figures so prominently in JFK
conspiracy theories.
However, Cohen's intimate involvement with Israel and its international
intrigue, and Cohen's dedication to advancing Israel's interests—even at the
expense of his own criminal money-making activities—needs to be examined
further.
The evidence we shall examine here suggests that even the death of film
actress Marilyn Monroe is indeed linked to the John F. Kennedy
assassination in a way never imagined.
Cohen, as we shall see, was using Miss Monroe—one of John F.
Kennedy's illicit liaisons—as a conduit to learn Kennedy's intentions toward
Israel. There is a lot more to the story of Marilyn Monroe's affair with JFK
than the tabloids have told us.
COHEN'S MEMOIRS
The primary source on Mickey Cohen is the Los Angeles mobster's
own colorful memoirs. Cohen's memoir—Mickey Cohen: In My Own
Words—is one of the more fascinating first-hand accounts of life in
Organized Crime. The memoir is particularly interesting for three specific
reasons:
(a) it is one of the few autobiographical accounts of life in Organized
Crime written by a non-Italian. Virtually all of the popular accounts of life
in the mob come from former "Mafia" members or associates. Cohen—
with the exception of Michael Milan, whom we first met in Chapter 7—is
perhaps the only other non-Italian, non-Mafia Organized Crime leader to put
his experiences in writing.
(b) Cohen, as Hollywood's rackets boss, was a central player in that
unique underworld that links the entertainment industry to Organized Crime.
A friend and associate of the prominent and of the rich and powerful, Cohen
knew where Hollywood's bodies were buried, in more ways than one.
(c) Cohen's "ghost-writer,"—the man who put Cohen's sometimes
inelegant ramblings together and edited them for publication—was John
Peer Nugent.
THE CIA CONNECTION
A former correspondent for Newsweek, Nugent was—on one occasion—
taken into custody while in Africa on suspicion of being a CIA agent. He was
released through the personal intervention of then-Secretary of State Dean
Rusk. However, according to organized crime authority Art Kunkin, Nugent
did have CIA connections. 414
Interestingly enough, Nugent himself once participated in a debate with
JFK assassination investigator, A. J. Weberman, co-author of Coup d'Etat
in America, where he—Nugent—sought to refute CIA complicity in the
JFK assassination.
In this context, one can't help but wonder if Cohen's memoirs weren't
a laundered version, CIA-style.
Both what does appear in Cohen's reminiscences—and what doesn't
appear—are equally intriguing. Cohen's memoirs are a gold-mine of often
fascinating information, particularly in regard to the Hollywood mobster's
early links to Israel and its birth struggle.
SUCCESSOR TO SIEGEL
Cohen was the West Coast successor to Meyer Lansky's ill-fated
boyhood crony, Benjamin Siegel, Organized Crime's top man on the West
Coast until his bloody assassination on June 20, 1947. Remembered best as
"the man who invented Las Vegas," the handsome Siegel was shot dead in
the Beverly Hills home of his second wife, mob playgirl Virginia Hill.
Lansky and Siegel were longtime friends and early partners in Brooklyn
at the beginning of their initial reach into the upper echelons of Organized
Crime. The oft-told tales of New York's "Bug and Meyer Mob" are
legendary in the annals of Organized Crime. "Bug and Meyer" were
treacherous killers in those early years. There's no reason to think that
Lansky mellowed with age.
Believed by Organized Crime's ruling commission of looting funds
earmarked for the casino network he was establishing in Las Vegas on
behalf of the syndicate, Siegel was slain in retribution for his betrayal. This
was said to be a great personal loss for his friend, Lansky.
LANSKY ORDERS THE HIT
Yet, Lansky himself apparently agreed to the decision that Siegel had to
be executed. Lansky even agreed to handle the arrangements if necessary Apparently he did. "I had no choice," Lansky later said, reflecting upon his
friend's betrayal and its consequences. 415
(The best accounts of Siegel's role in the development of the Las Vegas
front for the Lansky Crime Syndicate appear in The Green Felt Jungle by Ed
Reid and Ovid Demaris and We Only Kill Each Other, a biography of Siegel
written by Dean Jennings).
HOOVER SENDS HIS SYMPATHIES
In Chapter 7 we explored the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's seeming
inability to acknowledge the existence of the Lansky Organized Crime
Syndicate as well as Hoover's connections to Israel's American-based
intelligence and propaganda agency, the Lansky Syndicate-financed Anti Defamation
League (A.D.L) of B'nai B'rith. (We shall discuss the A.D.L in
further detail in Chapter 17.)
Michael Milan (whom we first met in Chapter 7 as a mutual associate
of both Hoover and Lansky) says that when the hit was ordered on Ben
Siegel, "Even J. Edgar Hoover himself had to concur and told everybody to
stand away. He sent Meyer Lansky his personal condolences, however,
because he had liked Benny, and Benny had showed him a good time
whenever he went to the Coast."416
Whatever the circumstances, it was, in fact Mickey Cohen who
assumed Siegel's position as Lansky's West Coast representative upon
Siegel's assassination.
LANSKY'S 'EYES AND EARS'
According to Lansky's biographer, Hank Messick, it was Cohen who
was Lansky's real "eyes and ears" in Southern California—not his good
friend Siegel. One of Cohen's primary responsibilities was keeping an eye
on the free-wheeling and reckless Siegel on Lansky's behalf.
When Siegel was removed from the scene it was Cohen who stepped in
and took charge of Lansky's West Coast affairs—quite a fortuitous set of
circumstances for the simian thug who could —by no means—ever have
competed with Siegel in a beauty contest. No wonder then that Cohen
recalled in his memoirs, "I have a great love and respect and a complete high
regard for Meyer Lansky." 417
COHEN & ISRAEL
Aside, however, from his direct ties to Lansky, and his own intra-mob
machinations, Mickey Cohen was in the State of Israel's camp from the
very beginning of its existence—even before. By his own admission,
Cohen was engaged in arms smuggling and fund-raising for Israel even
before Israel had become a state.
In his memoirs Cohen recalls his first encounter with an agent of
Israel's international fund-raising and arms-smuggling operations and how
he came to identify with Israel's cause.
Speaking of his crony, Mike Howard, Cohen recounted the day that
Howard introduced him to an Israeli operative. (In his memoirs Cohen does
not name the Israeli in question.) Howard, he says, "knew that I would do
anything for a cause that was right, and particularly Jewish causes." 418
At first, Cohen says, he was hesitant to become involved. He changed
his mind, though. "So they come back," Cohen recalled, "and we sit down
to talk. And the guy tells me this story about the Haganah, which was
organized by the David Ben-Gurion guy. And he tells me especially about
the Irgun and the type of war they're fighting against the British, and the
type of guys they are and all this. And I got high on him."
But you know when you're kinky [i.e. criminally-oriented] your mind
runs kinky. I still figured this must be a racket thing. So I says to the guy,
Tookit, I don't know nothing about these things. I didn't even know there
was a war going on in Israel. Let me think it over.” 419
Cohen made no decision, one way or the other, but after Hollywood
screenwriter, publicist and playwright Ben Hecht—an ardent advocate of the
Zionist cause—came visiting, Cohen began to see the light. Hecht appeared
at Cohen's headquarters accompanied by a representative of the bloody
terrorist Irgun gang. The individual, once again, Cohen did not name. "I
could see that I was dealing with a real man, no con guy," 420 remembered
Cohen.
MENACHEM BEGIN COMES TO TOWN
In his own memoirs Jimmy ("the Weasel") Fratianno, a top West
Coast Mafia figure-turned-government informant, gives us a hint as to who
Cohen's Irgun friend may have been. Fratianno described a benefit for Israel
at an exclusive Bel Air home:
"After [Cohen's] little speech, we start moving around the room and
Mickey's rabbi introduces us to a guy called Menachem Begin, who's the
boss of the Irgun, an underground outfit in Palestine. This guy's wearing a
black armband and he tells us he's wanted back there for bombing a hotel
that killed almost a hundred people. He's a fucking lamster [i.e. on the run].
"Anyway, he makes a speech, and after him just about everybody made
a speech. It just goes on and on. Afterwards these other guys from the
Haganah, another underground outfit, start arguing with Begin about who's
going to handle the money. So Mickey chirps in and it's agreed that his
rabbi will handle the money and Mickey will buy guns and ammo and ship
them over there."
421
[This, as we shall see, would not be the last time that Menachem Begin
would be spotted in the company of Mickey Cohen, however.]
Fratianno frankly doubted Cohen's sincerity and suspected that Cohen
was in "the cause" for the money to be made. However, in his own memoirs, Cohen was insistent about his dedication to Israel. In fact, he goes
on at length about his devotion.
"I got engrossed with the goddamn thing pretty strong see. Through my
connections I made everybody throughout the country—the Italians, the Jews,
the Irish—set up whatever positions there were to be helpful to the Israel
cause." 422
DEDICATED TO ISRAEL
Cohen's dedication was inestimable. He was so devoted to Israel,
indeed, that he allowed his criminal activities to go by the wayside. Cohen
says:
"Now I got so engrossed with Israel that I actually pushed aside a lot of
my activities and done nothing but what was involved with this Irgun war.
It's a nature of mine, see. Either I go whole hog or nothing. So I got
involved with this goddamn Israel war for three years. I started to have
relationships with Irgun members back in Israel. They got to understand me
better and I got to understand them better.
"Well, I had raised considerable money, not particularly myself, but
through me, throughout the country. There were dinners held in Boston,
Philadelphia, Miami. And plenty of armament and equipment was collected
that you couldn't possibly get.
"It was only God's will that Harry Truman was President. He couldn't
openly allow it to be known that he was okaying stuff to be shipped back
there or that stuff was being stolen from the ships that were coming back
from the Second World War.
"But it was only with Truman's looking the other way, or with his
being in favor, that it was done. To me, he was the greatest man in the
world, Harry Truman, because of what he done for Israel and because he
made it available for us to do.
"We were able to get on ships that were being put into mothballs. I had
access to all that stuff on the docks. Some of the stuff and equipment like
machine guns that we got back to Israel had never got a chance to be used in
the Second World War. They weren't even put together. They were still in
the cases, in the straw, in the oil and everything. We shipped them right
over." 423
JACK RUBY COMES TO TOWN
It was during this same time that Cohen was also making the
acquaintance of another thug, Jack Rubinstein, who ultimately changed his
last name to Ruby.
Gary Wean—whose business it was to keep an eye on Cohen's
activities—later put his fascinating experiences down in an informal memoir
entitled There's a Fish in the Courthouse.
Wean's contributions to Kennedy assassination research, however, have
not received the widespread recognition they deserve.
A detective sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, Wean got to know Mickey Cohen well. What's more, as a Criminal Intelligence Investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation, Wean was privy to much "inside" information about Cohen and his activities in Hollywood. Later, Wean was chief investigator for the Ventura County Public Defenders Office until 1970. He is now retired.
In his memoirs, Wean says he saw Ruby twice in Hollywood in 1946 and in 1947. The first time Ruby was riding with Cohen in Cohen's big black limousine, although, on that occasion, they were not introduced.424 The second time he encountered Ruby was a year later. According to Wean, he and his partner went to a club known as Harry's Place. Ruby was there, and Wean introduced himself and informed Ruby he was a police officer.
In turn, Ruby introduced himself. He said: "My name is Jack Ruby. I just came out from Chicago to get with Harry. Since the war's over the West Coast is dead, so is Chicago, We're moving 'everything' to New Orleans and Miami. That is where all the action is going to be from now, between the United States and Cuba." 425
A New Orleans chief assistant district attorney has essentially confirmed Ruby's claim that the Crescent City had become a hub of syndicate financing and activity. According to the prosecutor, "There is too much money here. We feel that it's flowing in from other Cosa Nostra [Mafia] organizations in other parts of the country for investment by the local mobs. This could be their financial center, with a lot of nice safe places where campaign contributions and outright bribery have pretty well insulated them from the law." 426
In any case, as we shall see, this was just the beginning of Jack Ruby's relationship with Mickey Cohen and Cohen's West Coast associates. It wasn't until 1963, however, that the relationship came full circle, as we shall see in Chapter 14.
As author John Davis notes: "One of Cohen's rackets was sexually
compromising Hollywood stars for the purpose of blackmail. It had been Cohen
who engineered the torrid affair between his accomplice, Johnny Stompanato,
and film star Lana Turner, in the hope of getting pictures of the two in bed
together." 427 [Miss Turner's daughter later killed Stompanato in an event
that became a major Hollywood scandal.]
But Cohen's activities went further. Cohen was also manipulating beautiful screen star Marilyn Monroe for yet another purpose—one which had international implications.
Now as the legend goes, it was ostensibly the Frank Sinatra connection that led to the introduction of Marilyn Monroe to John F. Kennedy However, according to Gary Wean, it was in fact the Mickey Cohen connection that brought the handsome Massachusetts Senator and the Hollywood sex symbol together.
Wean reveals that Cohen's close friend, entertainer Joey Bishop—who also happened to be a member of Sinatra's famous clique known as "the rat pack"—was the one who actually set up the circumstances that led to the initial liaison between JFK and Miss Monroe during the 1960 presidential campaign.
"It was Joey Bishop that came up with the 'idea of a wild party' for Kennedy. He talked Peter Lawford, JFK's brother-in-law into it."428 According to Wean, there was a reason for all of this—beyond satisfying JFK's notorious appetite for beautiful women: "Bishop knew Kennedy would be taken by the Monroe sex appeal. Bishop was a Jew and real tight with Cohen.
"At that time the rabbis were pushing them hard as hell to squeeze every bit of dough they could get out of Hollywood for Israel. Menachem Begin was spending more time hanging around Cohen in Hollywood than in Israel. Begin desperately wanted to know what Kennedy's plan was for Israel if he became president.
"Cohen figured if they could duke Marilyn into Kennedy, Cohen's pimp Georgie Piscitelli would be able to manipulate her and tell them everything Kennedy told her. Also they'd work a blackmail squeeze against JFK if a romance blossomed. Cohen also had something going on with Jack Ruby. His girl friend, a stripper by the name of Candy Barr, was making a lot of trips between Ruby in Dallas and Cohen in Hollywood."429
According to Wean, Cohen's pimp was also sleeping with Miss Monroe. Wean learned this from a young lady named Mary Mercandante who was jealous of Piscitelli's relationship with Miss Monroe. Miss Mercandante was a prostitute and Piscitelli was her pimp.
According to Wean's source: "Cohen and Begin were plenty upset over Kennedy's plans to give billions of dollars to the Peace Corps, and the South American and African countries." 432
Miss Mercandante began threatening to reveal all she knew about Cohen's manipulation of the film actress and the affair with Kennedy. Wean, however, had already reported his findings to his superiors.
Now although there has long been widespread suspicion that Marilyn Monroe was herself perhaps murdered, the tabloids would have us believe that she was murdered by the Kennedy family to keep silent about her affair with the President and—allegedly also—his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The evidence we have seen here, however, suggests that if Miss Monroe was murdered it indeed was to keep her silent—but for an entirely different reason.
If Miss Monroe ever revealed that Mickey Cohen had used her to find out Kennedy's stance toward Israel, it would have opened a Pandora's Box that could have exposed Israel's uneasy relationship with JFK—something that Israel and its American lobby could not afford.
What is interesting is that in his memoirs—which are filled with Cohen's incessant name-dropping and accounts of his friendships with a bevy of Hollywood figures—Cohen never once mentions Marilyn Monroe. Nor does he mention Jack Ruby, for that matter either.
There were evidently certain things that Cohen and his co-author did not see fit to mention. It is more than interesting to note, at least in passing, that Meyer Lansky himself had "inside" knowledge on the extra-marital affairs of Attorney General Robert Kennedy at the very least.
According to J. Edgar Hoover biographer Curt Gentry, Lansky was overheard on a federal wiretap on August 1, 1962 telling his wife, Teddy, that Robert Kennedy was carrying on an affair with a woman in El Paso, Texas. 433
Wean described in his memoirs how he first discovered the close working relationship between Cohen and Israeli terrorist-turned-roving diplomat (and later Israeli Prime Minister) Menachem Begin, whose Hollywood activities we reviewed earlier in this chapter:
"My partner and I'd been watching Mickey Cohen from a distance. We knew he was up to something out of the ordinary. He spent a lot of time with a weird-looking little guy at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel lunch counter and drug store area.
"What got our curiosity most was Mickey seemed to be taking orders from the stranger. We got photos with our telescopic lens of Cohen and his friend. The office checked it out. We learned his name: Menachem Begin."434
To find out further what Cohen and Begin were involved with, Wean deployed a Yiddish-speaking spy to listen in on Cohen and Begin's conversations. Wean notes: "He reported that the two in a deep discussion were very excitable. There was a lot of talk about Cuba and military operations and the Kennedy's."435 According to Wean's operative: "We've really got something going. Mickey sounded like a politician. They were going on about war and billion dollar appropriations, cursing JFK about his crazy Peace Corps and wasting money." 436
According to Wean, after this coffee shop conference, Cohen and Begin
departed. Wean and his partner followed Cohen to an elegant home in Los
Angeles. There, Wean says, Cohen and Begin met with high-priced lawyer
Melvin Belli, Cohen's longtime friend and attorney. 437
Belli, we shall see in Chapter 14, came to play an important role in the tangled web of intrigue surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Belli served as attorney for Jack Ruby.
Interestingly enough, according to Wean, Cohen, Ruby and Menachem Begin shared one other thing in common: Cohen was sharing his girlfriend, stripper Candy Barr, with not only Ruby (then operating in Dallas), but also with Begin, Israel's man in Hollywood.438
However, Mickey Cohen had a lot more on his mind than his criminal activities and his sexual pursuits. Cohen was interested in the survival of Israel, the nation he had helped establish.
The simian-like Los Angeles thug was very much privy to the circumstances of what really took place in the JFK assassination. What Cohen may have known, however, was lost forever when the Lansky henchman died suddenly of a heart attack. He had no known history of heart trouble. In Chapter 14 we shall examine Cohen's connection with Jack Ruby in more detail.
Years after his encounter with Cohen and Begin, Gary Wean received what he described as "a strange call." It was from a writer named Ed Tivnan who said he was looking into Begin's alleged association with American gangsters.
There is another interesting sidelight to all of this. When author Anthony Summers was preparing his book Goddess, a life of Marilyn Monroe, he contacted Wean for information and Wean provided Summers with all of the details we've reviewed in these pages.
However, when Summers' biography of Miss Monroe finally hit the bookstores, the author had nothing to say about Cohen and the Israeli connection. Instead, the book suggested that Miss Monroe's death was a proximate result of her affair with the Kennedy brothers.
Indeed, the book led the reader to believe that it was the Kennedy's who were, one way or the other, responsible—directly or indirectly—for the young woman's tragic death. The Mickey Cohen-Israel connection went unmentioned.
There is something else interesting. This same Anthony Summers is the Anthony Summers who wrote an exhaustive study of the JFK assassination entitled Conspiracy. (This was before he met with Wean.) However, when Summers released an up-dated edition of his book in 1992, he never reported the information that Wean provided him about the Israeli connection. It is likely, in all fairness to Summers, that he probably did not understand the significance of what he had learned. However, it is very clear, considering everything that we have already examined in these pages—and what we are about to examine—that Wean's discovery was a key to understanding what really happened on November 22, 1963.
Gruber, it also turns out—perhaps not surprisingly—was associated with Lansky's Mexico City syndicate drug-smuggling connection, "Happy" Meltzer, with whom, as we shall see in Chapter 14, Ruby had his own connections. 440
In fact, although Ruby had not seen Gruber in some ten years, Gruber came to visit Ruby in Dallas in November of 1963, just shortly before the assassination.
Other than this, the Cohen-Ruby link is given little play—perhaps precisely because it points not in the direction of the Mafia, but instead, more directly to Israel and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.
As it stands, ironically enough, Mickey Cohen was already incarcerated in federal prison by the time of the JFK assassination. Lansky's West Coast lieutenant was one of many "big names" snared in the Kennedy war against the Lansky crime syndicate. There was clearly no love lost between Mickey Cohen and the Kennedy brothers.
It seems likely—and Gary Wean believes, as he told this author—that Cohen's henchman Gruber was the intermediary for the Lansky syndicate in the delicate matter of how to silence the patsy—Oswald—who had somehow escaped being killed and was then in the custody of the Dallas police.
Mickey Cohen and Menachem Begin very clearly were involved in the initial stages of what ultimately evolved into the JFK assassination conspiracy precisely because of Kennedy's difficult foreign policy struggle with Israel which sparked the plot against the American president.
Perhaps this might explain why Jack Ruby—in his final days—was fearful that if the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy ever came out that, as Ruby put it, "the Jews" would be blamed for the crime.441
In the next chapter we will examine Jack Ruby's role further and consider his connections with the Lansky syndicate—and with Israel.
next
The Errand Boy:
Jack Ruby Was More "Mossad" Than "Mafia"
notes
Chapter Twelve An Opiate for the Masses 385 Scott, p. 71. 386 Alfred McCoy. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), pp. 40-41.
387 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), pp. 210-211.
388 Ibid.
389 Dan Moldea. The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob, (New York: Paddington Press Ltd., 1978), p. 123.
390 Messick, p. 215.
391 Ibid.
392 McCoy, p. 40.
393 Ibid., pp. 44-45.
394 Messick, p. 199.
395 McCoy, Ibid.
396 Ibid., pp. 64-65.
397 Ibid., pp. 60-61.
398 Ibid.
399 Ibid. p. 19.
400 Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 259.
401 Ibid., p. 258.
402 McCoy, p. 462.
403 Bernard Fensterwald and the Committee to Investigate Assassinations. Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), p. 187.
404 McCoy, p. 477.
405 Executive Intelligence Review. Project Democracy: The 'Parallel Government' Behind the Iran-Contra Affair. (Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service, 1987), p. 287.
406 Jonathan Kwitny. Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World. (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 331.
407 The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1991.
408 Rachel Ehrenfeld. Evil Money: Encounters Along the Money Trail. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), p. 259.
409 Ibid.
410 Henry Hurt. Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985), pp. 417-419.
411 Dick Russell. The Man Who Knew Too Much. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 563
412 McCoy, p. 14
413 Giancana, p. 215.
Chapter Thirteen Israel's California Connection
414 A. J. Weberman writing in The Yipster Times (no date available)
415 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), p. 153.
416 Michael Milan. The Squad: The U.S. Government's Secret Alliance With Organized Crime. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1989), p. 195.
417 Mickey Cohen with John Peer Nugent. Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975), p. 82.
418 Ibid., p. 90. 419 Ibid.
420 Ibid., p. 91.
421 Ovid Demaris. The Last Mafioso. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 32.
422 Cohen, Ibid.
423 Ibid., pp. 91-92.
424 Gary L. Wean. There's a Fish in the Courthouse. (Oak View, California: Casitas Books, 1987), p. 681.
425 Ibid.
426 Robert Morrow. The Senator Must Die: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 16.
427 John Davis. Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 1989), p. 239.
428 Wean, pp. 678-679.
429 Ibid., p. 679.
430 Ibid., p. 677.
431 Ibid.,
432 Ibid.
433 Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 493. 434 Wean, pp. 687-688.
435 Ibid., p. 688.
436 Ibid., p. 689. 437 Ibid.
438 Ibid.
439 Ibid., p. 739.
440 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 143.
441 Ramparts (No date available).
A detective sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, Wean got to know Mickey Cohen well. What's more, as a Criminal Intelligence Investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation, Wean was privy to much "inside" information about Cohen and his activities in Hollywood. Later, Wean was chief investigator for the Ventura County Public Defenders Office until 1970. He is now retired.
In his memoirs, Wean says he saw Ruby twice in Hollywood in 1946 and in 1947. The first time Ruby was riding with Cohen in Cohen's big black limousine, although, on that occasion, they were not introduced.424 The second time he encountered Ruby was a year later. According to Wean, he and his partner went to a club known as Harry's Place. Ruby was there, and Wean introduced himself and informed Ruby he was a police officer.
In turn, Ruby introduced himself. He said: "My name is Jack Ruby. I just came out from Chicago to get with Harry. Since the war's over the West Coast is dead, so is Chicago, We're moving 'everything' to New Orleans and Miami. That is where all the action is going to be from now, between the United States and Cuba." 425
A New Orleans chief assistant district attorney has essentially confirmed Ruby's claim that the Crescent City had become a hub of syndicate financing and activity. According to the prosecutor, "There is too much money here. We feel that it's flowing in from other Cosa Nostra [Mafia] organizations in other parts of the country for investment by the local mobs. This could be their financial center, with a lot of nice safe places where campaign contributions and outright bribery have pretty well insulated them from the law." 426
In any case, as we shall see, this was just the beginning of Jack Ruby's relationship with Mickey Cohen and Cohen's West Coast associates. It wasn't until 1963, however, that the relationship came full circle, as we shall see in Chapter 14.
COHEN, MARILYN MONROE AND JFK
By 1960, Cohen was an established power in the West Coast syndicate
operations of Meyer Lansky. And Cohen was also a key figure in
Hollywood, nurturing his relationships with the film colony there—for his own
insidious purposes. But Cohen's activities went further. Cohen was also manipulating beautiful screen star Marilyn Monroe for yet another purpose—one which had international implications.
Now as the legend goes, it was ostensibly the Frank Sinatra connection that led to the introduction of Marilyn Monroe to John F. Kennedy However, according to Gary Wean, it was in fact the Mickey Cohen connection that brought the handsome Massachusetts Senator and the Hollywood sex symbol together.
Wean reveals that Cohen's close friend, entertainer Joey Bishop—who also happened to be a member of Sinatra's famous clique known as "the rat pack"—was the one who actually set up the circumstances that led to the initial liaison between JFK and Miss Monroe during the 1960 presidential campaign.
"It was Joey Bishop that came up with the 'idea of a wild party' for Kennedy. He talked Peter Lawford, JFK's brother-in-law into it."428 According to Wean, there was a reason for all of this—beyond satisfying JFK's notorious appetite for beautiful women: "Bishop knew Kennedy would be taken by the Monroe sex appeal. Bishop was a Jew and real tight with Cohen.
"At that time the rabbis were pushing them hard as hell to squeeze every bit of dough they could get out of Hollywood for Israel. Menachem Begin was spending more time hanging around Cohen in Hollywood than in Israel. Begin desperately wanted to know what Kennedy's plan was for Israel if he became president.
"Cohen figured if they could duke Marilyn into Kennedy, Cohen's pimp Georgie Piscitelli would be able to manipulate her and tell them everything Kennedy told her. Also they'd work a blackmail squeeze against JFK if a romance blossomed. Cohen also had something going on with Jack Ruby. His girl friend, a stripper by the name of Candy Barr, was making a lot of trips between Ruby in Dallas and Cohen in Hollywood."429
According to Wean, Cohen's pimp was also sleeping with Miss Monroe. Wean learned this from a young lady named Mary Mercandante who was jealous of Piscitelli's relationship with Miss Monroe. Miss Mercandante was a prostitute and Piscitelli was her pimp.
JFK'S VIEWS TOWARD ISRAEL?
It was from Miss Mercandante that Wean learned something which he
came to describe as "the really weird stuff." 430 Miss Mercandante told Wean
that Piscitelli's job was to pump Miss Monroe for information about JFK's
views toward Israel. (As we have seen in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, Israel
and its American lobby were uneasy, to say the very least, about Kennedy.)
However, according to Wean, Piscitelli told Miss Mercandante that Marilyn
would get upset when he began pressing her, saying she didn't know
anything about politics. Wean reports that Miss Mercandante told him
that: "Cohen got mad and told Georgie to stick with Marilyn and pour
drinks or pills down her, whatever it takes and find out what John Kennedy
intended to do about financing Israel."431 According to Wean's source: "Cohen and Begin were plenty upset over Kennedy's plans to give billions of dollars to the Peace Corps, and the South American and African countries." 432
Miss Mercandante began threatening to reveal all she knew about Cohen's manipulation of the film actress and the affair with Kennedy. Wean, however, had already reported his findings to his superiors.
TWO MURDERS?
Miss Mercandante was later murdered. She appears to be yet another of
the many victims of what ultimately evolved into the JFK assassination
conspiracy and cover-up. Now although there has long been widespread suspicion that Marilyn Monroe was herself perhaps murdered, the tabloids would have us believe that she was murdered by the Kennedy family to keep silent about her affair with the President and—allegedly also—his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The evidence we have seen here, however, suggests that if Miss Monroe was murdered it indeed was to keep her silent—but for an entirely different reason.
If Miss Monroe ever revealed that Mickey Cohen had used her to find out Kennedy's stance toward Israel, it would have opened a Pandora's Box that could have exposed Israel's uneasy relationship with JFK—something that Israel and its American lobby could not afford.
What is interesting is that in his memoirs—which are filled with Cohen's incessant name-dropping and accounts of his friendships with a bevy of Hollywood figures—Cohen never once mentions Marilyn Monroe. Nor does he mention Jack Ruby, for that matter either.
There were evidently certain things that Cohen and his co-author did not see fit to mention. It is more than interesting to note, at least in passing, that Meyer Lansky himself had "inside" knowledge on the extra-marital affairs of Attorney General Robert Kennedy at the very least.
According to J. Edgar Hoover biographer Curt Gentry, Lansky was overheard on a federal wiretap on August 1, 1962 telling his wife, Teddy, that Robert Kennedy was carrying on an affair with a woman in El Paso, Texas. 433
WHAT WERE THEY UP TO?
In any event, Mickey Cohen's strange activities were of continuing
particular interest to Gary Wean. Wean described in his memoirs how he first discovered the close working relationship between Cohen and Israeli terrorist-turned-roving diplomat (and later Israeli Prime Minister) Menachem Begin, whose Hollywood activities we reviewed earlier in this chapter:
"My partner and I'd been watching Mickey Cohen from a distance. We knew he was up to something out of the ordinary. He spent a lot of time with a weird-looking little guy at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel lunch counter and drug store area.
"What got our curiosity most was Mickey seemed to be taking orders from the stranger. We got photos with our telescopic lens of Cohen and his friend. The office checked it out. We learned his name: Menachem Begin."434
To find out further what Cohen and Begin were involved with, Wean deployed a Yiddish-speaking spy to listen in on Cohen and Begin's conversations. Wean notes: "He reported that the two in a deep discussion were very excitable. There was a lot of talk about Cuba and military operations and the Kennedy's."435 According to Wean's operative: "We've really got something going. Mickey sounded like a politician. They were going on about war and billion dollar appropriations, cursing JFK about his crazy Peace Corps and wasting money." 436
MELVIN BELLI
Belli, we shall see in Chapter 14, came to play an important role in the tangled web of intrigue surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Belli served as attorney for Jack Ruby.
Interestingly enough, according to Wean, Cohen, Ruby and Menachem Begin shared one other thing in common: Cohen was sharing his girlfriend, stripper Candy Barr, with not only Ruby (then operating in Dallas), but also with Begin, Israel's man in Hollywood.438
However, Mickey Cohen had a lot more on his mind than his criminal activities and his sexual pursuits. Cohen was interested in the survival of Israel, the nation he had helped establish.
COHEN'S MISSION
Cohen's peculiar interest in JFK's Middle East policy, coupled with his
unfortunate manipulation of Marilyn Monroe, along with his longtime
devotion to the Zionist cause, places him squarely in the midst of the
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate's central part in the JFK assassination
conspiracy. The simian-like Los Angeles thug was very much privy to the circumstances of what really took place in the JFK assassination. What Cohen may have known, however, was lost forever when the Lansky henchman died suddenly of a heart attack. He had no known history of heart trouble. In Chapter 14 we shall examine Cohen's connection with Jack Ruby in more detail.
Years after his encounter with Cohen and Begin, Gary Wean received what he described as "a strange call." It was from a writer named Ed Tivnan who said he was looking into Begin's alleged association with American gangsters.
COVERING FOR ISRAEL
"My book's purpose is to deny, dispel and silence the accusations of
Begin's criminal associations with them," 439 said Tivnan. Tivnan was not
interested in Wean's account of Begin's very real association with the
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. It was something that Israel did not
want told. [cannot undo what really happened and Begin is and was a terrorist who had dealings with Americans gangsters for weapons and raising money for the Zionist cause! DC]There is another interesting sidelight to all of this. When author Anthony Summers was preparing his book Goddess, a life of Marilyn Monroe, he contacted Wean for information and Wean provided Summers with all of the details we've reviewed in these pages.
However, when Summers' biography of Miss Monroe finally hit the bookstores, the author had nothing to say about Cohen and the Israeli connection. Instead, the book suggested that Miss Monroe's death was a proximate result of her affair with the Kennedy brothers.
Indeed, the book led the reader to believe that it was the Kennedy's who were, one way or the other, responsible—directly or indirectly—for the young woman's tragic death. The Mickey Cohen-Israel connection went unmentioned.
There is something else interesting. This same Anthony Summers is the Anthony Summers who wrote an exhaustive study of the JFK assassination entitled Conspiracy. (This was before he met with Wean.) However, when Summers released an up-dated edition of his book in 1992, he never reported the information that Wean provided him about the Israeli connection. It is likely, in all fairness to Summers, that he probably did not understand the significance of what he had learned. However, it is very clear, considering everything that we have already examined in these pages—and what we are about to examine—that Wean's discovery was a key to understanding what really happened on November 22, 1963.
THE COHEN CONNECTION
Today, there are those, as we have seen, who continually cite Jack
Ruby's connections with organized crime as proof that "The Mafia Killed
JFK." Some have even pointed out that one of Ruby's first telephone calls
he made immediately after the JFK assassination (just shortly after Lee
Harvey Oswald had been arrested) was to Al Gruber, a Mickey Cohen
associate in Hollywood. Gruber, it also turns out—perhaps not surprisingly—was associated with Lansky's Mexico City syndicate drug-smuggling connection, "Happy" Meltzer, with whom, as we shall see in Chapter 14, Ruby had his own connections. 440
In fact, although Ruby had not seen Gruber in some ten years, Gruber came to visit Ruby in Dallas in November of 1963, just shortly before the assassination.
Other than this, the Cohen-Ruby link is given little play—perhaps precisely because it points not in the direction of the Mafia, but instead, more directly to Israel and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.
As it stands, ironically enough, Mickey Cohen was already incarcerated in federal prison by the time of the JFK assassination. Lansky's West Coast lieutenant was one of many "big names" snared in the Kennedy war against the Lansky crime syndicate. There was clearly no love lost between Mickey Cohen and the Kennedy brothers.
It seems likely—and Gary Wean believes, as he told this author—that Cohen's henchman Gruber was the intermediary for the Lansky syndicate in the delicate matter of how to silence the patsy—Oswald—who had somehow escaped being killed and was then in the custody of the Dallas police.
Mickey Cohen and Menachem Begin very clearly were involved in the initial stages of what ultimately evolved into the JFK assassination conspiracy precisely because of Kennedy's difficult foreign policy struggle with Israel which sparked the plot against the American president.
Perhaps this might explain why Jack Ruby—in his final days—was fearful that if the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy ever came out that, as Ruby put it, "the Jews" would be blamed for the crime.441
In the next chapter we will examine Jack Ruby's role further and consider his connections with the Lansky syndicate—and with Israel.
next
The Errand Boy:
Jack Ruby Was More "Mossad" Than "Mafia"
notes
Chapter Twelve An Opiate for the Masses 385 Scott, p. 71. 386 Alfred McCoy. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), pp. 40-41.
387 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), pp. 210-211.
388 Ibid.
389 Dan Moldea. The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob, (New York: Paddington Press Ltd., 1978), p. 123.
390 Messick, p. 215.
391 Ibid.
392 McCoy, p. 40.
393 Ibid., pp. 44-45.
394 Messick, p. 199.
395 McCoy, Ibid.
396 Ibid., pp. 64-65.
397 Ibid., pp. 60-61.
398 Ibid.
399 Ibid. p. 19.
400 Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 259.
401 Ibid., p. 258.
402 McCoy, p. 462.
403 Bernard Fensterwald and the Committee to Investigate Assassinations. Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), p. 187.
404 McCoy, p. 477.
405 Executive Intelligence Review. Project Democracy: The 'Parallel Government' Behind the Iran-Contra Affair. (Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service, 1987), p. 287.
406 Jonathan Kwitny. Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World. (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 331.
407 The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1991.
408 Rachel Ehrenfeld. Evil Money: Encounters Along the Money Trail. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), p. 259.
409 Ibid.
410 Henry Hurt. Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985), pp. 417-419.
411 Dick Russell. The Man Who Knew Too Much. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 563
412 McCoy, p. 14
413 Giancana, p. 215.
Chapter Thirteen Israel's California Connection
414 A. J. Weberman writing in The Yipster Times (no date available)
415 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), p. 153.
416 Michael Milan. The Squad: The U.S. Government's Secret Alliance With Organized Crime. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1989), p. 195.
417 Mickey Cohen with John Peer Nugent. Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975), p. 82.
418 Ibid., p. 90. 419 Ibid.
420 Ibid., p. 91.
421 Ovid Demaris. The Last Mafioso. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 32.
422 Cohen, Ibid.
423 Ibid., pp. 91-92.
424 Gary L. Wean. There's a Fish in the Courthouse. (Oak View, California: Casitas Books, 1987), p. 681.
425 Ibid.
426 Robert Morrow. The Senator Must Die: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 16.
427 John Davis. Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 1989), p. 239.
428 Wean, pp. 678-679.
429 Ibid., p. 679.
430 Ibid., p. 677.
431 Ibid.,
432 Ibid.
433 Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 493. 434 Wean, pp. 687-688.
435 Ibid., p. 688.
436 Ibid., p. 689. 437 Ibid.
438 Ibid.
439 Ibid., p. 739.
440 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 143.
441 Ramparts (No date available).
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