Lollie -
In a deleted scene in GFII we are introduced to Hyman Roth when he is a kid. The scene takes place right after The Landlord, Senior Roberto, leaves Vito's ( DeNiro ) office.
Roth actually worked for Vito as a mechanic and eventually did business with Vito.
Roth, through Johnny Ola used Fredo to set up Michael for the attempted hit on Michael in Tahoe. Obviously Ola also used Fredo to find out various information.
In one scene we see Michael introduce Fredo to Johnny Ola, with Fredo claiming that he never met Ola. Then later on in Havana, they are watching the show and Senator Geary asks Fredo how he knew about this club, and Fredo replies that Johnny Ola brought him here once before. "...Knows these places like the back of his hand..." It is at that moment that Michael realizes that Fredo was the one who set him up for the attempted hit because earlier Fredo had told Mike that he NEVER met Johhny Ola!
Here is an explaination by our esteemed Turnbull:
On November 23rd 2004, Turnbull writes :
"Here is an essay I've posted many times on this subject:
Many Godfather fans are put off by the complexity of the Michael Corleone/Hyman Roth war. They don’t understand why two gangsters with such apparently close ties try to kill each other, even while they’re forging ties to help each other’s businesses. They can’t figure out the twists and turns in Cuba. And they’re completely baffled by the famous line, “Michael Corleone says hello,” uttered by Carmine Rosado as he’s about to garrote Frankie Pentangeli.
The plot, admittedly complicated, can be made understandable if the viewer keeps in mind one over-arching fact: though Michael says to Fredo, "Roth wants me out," Michael is the one who wants Roth out. Roth and Vito Corleone had been partners, but only in the Prohibition-era booze business, as Roth pointedly reminds Michael several times. But Michael had been greedily horning in on Roth's Western gambling empire even before Vito died. The first business deal we see Michael involved in when he returned from Sicily was to push Moe Green, Roth's best friend, out of his Las Vegas hotel; later he had Moe killed because he resisted. By late 1958, when we first meet Hyman Roth, Michael has moved his entire operation to Lake Tahoe, owns three hotels in Nevada, and is about to force Meyer Klingman out of a fourth hotel, owned by Roth and the Lakeville Road Boys. And it's obvious that Michael has designs on Roth's Havana gaming empire. Small wonder Roth feels threatened!
Roth has been buying time by pretending he's a kindly elder statesman, in the twilight of his years, who regards Michael as his surrogate son and heir. But he's plotting all along to kill Michael—there isn’t room for both of them. With that roadmap before us, let’s retrace The Great Michael Corleone/Hyman Roth Fandango:
1. Roth decides to kill Michael at Anthony's First Communion party because he knows Frank Pentangeli will be there, contentious over the Rosato Brothers, whom Michael and Roth favor over Frankie. Thus Frankie has the perfect motivation to kill Michael--and will make the perfect fall-guy for the crime.
2. The assassination attempt against Michael fails. But when Michael visits Roth in Miami, Roth is heartened that Michael, as he expected, blames Frankie for the attempt. He promises to kill Frankie (“Frank Pentangeli is a dead man”), and even asks Roth's permission (“You don’t object?”)! Ah! Roth sees a silver lining in the cloud of the botched assassination: Michael will kill the obstreperous Frankie without his having to lift a finger or spend a dime! Heh-heh! BUT…
3. …instead of killing Frankie, Michael dispatches him to settle his problems with the Rosato Brothers. Oh-oh! Roth knows Michael would never give a pass to a mortal enemy. Now it’s certain that Michael doesn’t suspect Frankie in the Tahoe attack—leading to the possibility that he does suspect Roth. What to do?
4. Roth orders the Rosatos to kill Frankie at their meeting. That way, he eliminates a Michael-ally before the two of them can cook up any mischief against him. To maintain his façade, Roth can always claim that he’s only done what Michael said he was going to do anyway. (Later, in Havana, Roth implies that Frankie’s assassination was tit-for-tat for Michael’s murder of Moe Green.)
5. The Frankie assassination fails when a policeman happens by and thwarts it. But both Michael and Roth are unaware that Frankie has survived because they’ve got bigger fish to fry. At the very moment of Frankie’s necktie party, Michael’s in Havana, ostensibly being crowned Roth’s heir-apparent and successor to his Cuban gambling empire. By accepting his invitation, Roth surmises, Michael is signaling that he really doesn’t suspect Roth in the Tahoe violence after all. And, as the most influential gringo in Havana, Roth can have Michael squashed like a bug. The fly has come to the spider, Roth figures.
6. What Roth doesn’t know is that Michael has known all along that Roth was behind the Tahoe attempt. So, it doesn’t take clairvoyance on Michael’s part to figure out that the offer to him to be escorted home from the New Year’s Eve party at the Presidential Palace in a military car, for his “protection,” is in fact a ticket to a one-way ride. Doesn’t matter. Michael has made his plans: “Hyman Roth will never see the New Year.” BUT, what Michael doesn’t know is that the man he’s telling this to—brother Fredo—has betrayed him to Roth! Seems like both Michael and Roth have been having a contest to see who’s dumber.
7. Later that evening, at the Superman show, Fredo—the All-Time Stupid-Pill Champion—foolishly reveals his betrayal. Michael is crushed, but he recovers quickly and gives the nod to his bodyguard: Kill Roth and Johnny Ola right now!
8. The bodyguard gets into Roth’s suite and strangles Ola. But, in a stroke of luck (pun intended), Roth has suffered a stroke and is being removed by medical attendants. Foiled, the bodyguard follows him to the hospital. With his big black hat, heavy black sweater and black pants in the tropical heat, and clutching a wilted bunch of mangy flowers, the bodyguard might be expected to stand out like a sore thumb. But this is fun-loving Havana on New Year’s Eve, and nobody notices him. What’s more, Roth is being attended by only one nurse, who providentially slips away for a celebratory glass of bubbly. The coast is clear for the bodyguard to finish his job.
9. Meanwhile, Michael, with Fredo in tow, shows up at the Presidential Palace, both to maintain decorum and to establish an alibi while his bodyguard does his dirty work. Fredo’s been busy all day with his hosting-and-pimping duties for Michael’s guests, and has been under Michael’s watchful gaze. Now he notices that Roth and Ola are among the missing. He finally manages to slip away (“I’m gonna get me a real drink…”), and notifies one of his Cuban contacts that he met in an earlier trip (Fredo’s been to Cuba before: remember, “Johnny Ola brought me here”).
10. The Cubans react with alacrity: an elite-looking formation of military intelligence or police arrives at the hospital, double-timing all the way, and kills the bodyguard in the act of smothering Roth, just in the nick of time. Roth, who deserves the sobriquet “Lucky,” even more than Charlie Luciano, survives.
11. The New Year is cheered in at the Presidential Palace. Michael reveals his knowledge of Fredo’s betrayal with the bacio da morto on Fredo’s lips. Fredo panics. Michael’s plan rolls into action: His Cuban driver is waiting outside the Presidential Palace in his ’57 Mercury Montclair, and a chartered airplane is warming up, ready to fly Michael out of Cuba. Michael attempts to lure Fredo out with him, but Fredo bolts. Michael escapes Cuba, presumably with his $2 million in a suitcase intact.
12. Nine-Lives Roth not only survives the murder attempt, he also recovers ok from his stroke, and gets out of Cuba, presumably with help from the military who rescued him. But he might as well be dead, or so it seems: He’s lost everything in Cuba, Johnny Ola’s gone, and his war with Michael is out in the open—and he’s been defeated? Or has he?
13. Roth has an ace up his sleeve: He’s found out that Frank Pentangeli is alive! He immediately reaches for his ally, Questad, the counsel to the Senate Investigations Committee who “belongs to Roth.” Questad tells the committee that they can use Frankie to trap Michael Corleone. The committee members, greedy for publicity, go for it. The chairman, working through the Justice Department, importunes the New York City Police Department to keep Frankie’s survival secret, and to turn him over to the FBI. Everyone else thinks he’s dead.
14. The committee produces its “star witness,” Willie Cicci. Senator Geary, Michael’s putative ally since the brothel murder put his cogliones in Michael’s pocket, asks Cicci a question that’s seemingly helpful to Michael: “Did you ever get a direct order from him [Michael]? Or was there always a buffer?” “No,” replies Cicci, “I never talked to him.” Aha! Michael relaxes: the committee has labored and produced a mouse. They haven’t got anyone who can directly implicate Michael in a crime. Thus fortified, Michael decides not to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege, and denies all the committee’s accusations under oath.
15. Bada-Bing! The committee drops Frankie on Michael. Now they don’t have to prove that he committed any of the crimes they accused him of, nor does any court of law have to put him on trial for those crimes. They’ve got him on five counts of perjury! (actually four, if you take into account that Michael didn’t lie when he denied “ordering the murders of the heads of the Five Families in 1950,” because it really happened in 1955). The penalty for lying under oath is five years on each count. Looks bad for you, Michael. BUT…
16. …Bada-Bing! Michael produces Frankie’s brother, Vincenzo. Frankie, shamed, changes his tune: the FBI made him a deal, so he made up a bunch of stuff about Michael, but “it was all lies, all of it.” The committee adjourns, discomfited. Vincenzo returns to his two-meal town in Sicily. Frankie, his credibility as a witness against Michael destroyed forever, gets to spend the rest of his life on an Air Force base, at taxpayers’ expense—until Michael, through Tom Hagen, makes him a final offer he can’t refuse. Michael wins!
But, what about Carmine Rosato’s famous line as he was garroting Frankie: “Michael Corleone says hello”? Why would Carmine utter that line to a guy who was only seconds away from death—unless he intended him to live? Doesn’t it prove that Roth had planned for the New York cop to come in and foil the “murder attempt,” so that Frankie would live to indict Michael?
In a word: No. Not even Roth was clever enough to have bet his life on a split-second-timed plot to turn Frankie against Michael. Why would he even try, when he already had Michael in his killing-bottle in Havana? The simplest explanation is one that has been uncovered by Godfather scholars in an interview with Danny Aiello, who played Carmine Rosato. Aiello admits he ad-libbed the famous line, and Francis Coppola, for some reason (probably inadvertence), permitted the ad-lib to remain in the film, to the eternal bafflement of Godfather fans. But it’s also possible that Coppola, the most careful of directors, allowed it to remain because it fit the plot, even though Carmine intended to kill Frankie all along. “Michael Corleone says hello” was intended not for Frankie—but for Richie, the bartender, whose ginmill was being used to set up Frankie.
It’s obvious that Richie is a “civilian,” not a Made Man, and he’s nervous as hell about his bar being used for a murder (“Carmine, NO, not HERE!” he screams after the cop enters and Rosato draws his gun). Carmine knows that Richie might be squeezed by the cops investigating Frankie’s murder. Richie would be too fearful of Carmine to identify him as the killer. Still, as a civilian, Richie is not bound by the code of omerta. So Carmine hands Richie something he can give the cops so that Richie can get off the hook: “The murderers said, ‘Michael Corleone says hello.’ ” That line would set the police after Michael, and would be picked up by the press-- another nail into the coffin of Michael Corleone’s “legitimacy.” Clever Roth
- Originally Written by Turnbull
Don Cardi
Why did Fredo get upset? Why was Fredo afraid to let Michael know that he knew Johnny Ola? 
