THE PLOT TO KILL THE PRESIDENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170016-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: November 16, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170016-9
STAT'
A::T i CILF' 11ii'P..?.\:1J PARADE MAGAZINE
ON THE WASHINGTON POST
16 November 1980
Ctl tl~i taT- ;~ Xy t 112 1
by Go. Robert Blakey
and Richard N. Billings
Seventeen-years after John F. Kennedy was
gunned down in Dallas, his murder still has not
been solved. The accused assassin, Lee Harvey .
Oswald, apparently didn't act alone. Acousti-
cal experts have detected a fourth shot, fired,
they believe, by another assailant waiting in
ambush behind a grassy knoll.
,"Did the late mobster John Roselli know who
fired the mysterious fourth bullet? Did he later
confide the terrible secret tome before his own
violent death? G. Robert Blakey-Chief Coun-
sel of the House Select Committee on Assassi-
nations-believes so. He suspects that two of
the Mafia's most sinister godfathers, Carlos
Marcello. and Santo Trafficante, were behind
the plot to kill America's 35th President.
Roselli had agreed to knock off Cuban Pre-
mier Fidel Castro for the Central Intelligence
Agency- in hope that a grateful U.S. govern-
ment would overlook his occasional transgres-
g
s
mony of Roselli
sions. He cleared the project with his superior -.3ACX WAY of no .
in the mob, Sam Giancana, and recruited the
killers from Santo Trafficante's organization.
I learned about this Mission Impossible not
long after it failed, and my pursuit of the story n our investigation, we had an'abu'ndance of I
led me to Roselli.In time, he came to trust me information to evaluate. ? There was the
and to confide in me. He suggested that Traf- evidence gathered by our Committee and by I
ficante's assassins had been '"captured by government bodies. that had -gone' before I
Castro, who had turned them around under us-the FBI and the Warren Commission principally,
torture and had directed them to kill John F. but also the Kefauver Committee, the McClellan
Kennedy. Roselli indicated that the plotters . Committee, and the Church Committee,.tonameonly
had recruited Oswald, a sharpshooter who some of them. We also assessed the assassination
couldn't be traced to them. But to make sure literature (our bibliography consisted of 1021 titles).
the President died, one of Trafficante's trusted But the known facts needed the mucilage of a theory;
triggermen fired the fatal shot from behind the they had to be held together by a coherent view of i
b
au to be eliminated to Keep turn from impli-
cating'the mob. This contract was given to a
local punk, Jack Ruby, 'who had ties to Traf-
Roselli's version of the Kennedy' killing,
I
which I made public, intrigued the House As.
sassinations Committee. Chief Counsel Blakey
-a veteran of underworld investigations and
a recognized expert on organized crime--had
expected to debunk all the conspiracy
theories, but the deeper he dug, the more he
became convinced that elements of the mob
had plotted Kennedy's death. -
Blakey's book, written with Richard Billings
and excerpted here, makes a strong, if cir-
cumstantial, case for the-mob-did-it theory.
The authors depend heavily upon recorded
gunfire picked up by an open policeTnike at
the assassination scene as acoustical evidence
of a fourth smoking gun. Who else fired that
critical fourth shot if it wasn't a hit man for the
mob? The evidence is far less conclusive of a
conspiracy by any other possible plotters. And
there is the hauntin
te
ti
ficante. _ . - i _?Ttn''~
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170016-9