...she's promoting another book...riding the coattails of the author who believes more than one shooter was involved in the Kennedy assassination.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-jfk10.html


Mob boss ordered JFK hit, book says

October 10, 2005

BY JIM RITTER Staff Reporter

"Mafia Princess" Antoinette Giancana, daughter of the late Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, claims in a new book that her father ordered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

If true, this would make Sam Giancana guilty of one of history's worst crimes. But that doesn't trouble Antoinette Giancana.

"The Kennedys were not kind to my father," she said. "They were just as evil and corrupt as any mafioso."

Giancana teamed up with two University of Illinois at Chicago doctors to write JFK and Sam: The Connection between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations. The 217-page book will be published later this month by Cumberland House Publishing.

Giancana's co-authors are Dr. John Hughes, a neurologist, and Dr. Thomas Jobe, a psychiatrist.

Jobe earlier wrote Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Tragic Self, a Psychohistorical Portrayal. He and Hughes then teamed up on a book about the JFK assassination, and enlisted Giancana's help.

Hughes said he did the bulk of the research and writing. But he said Giancana is getting top billing in the list of authors because she's better known.

Giancana's best-selling 1984 memoir, Mafia Princess, was made into a TV movie starring Tony Curtis as Sam and soap opera star Susan Lucci as Antoinette. Now 70, Giancana lives in Elmwood Park. She's a sales associate for a retail chain and markets Giancana Marinara Sauce ("Just Like Dad's, Maybe Better").

Hughes said he read more than 40 books on the JFK assassination and spent almost every weekend for 13 years writing and rewriting the book. He wrote that he used his expertise in neurology to analyze how Kennedy's body moved after he was shot. This led Hughes to conclude that there must have been a shooter on the infamous grassy knoll to Kennedy's right.

Did mob help JFK win Illinois?

The mafia, Hughes wrote, helped Kennedy carry Illinois in the close 1960 election, assuring his victory. In return, JFK was supposed to go easy on the mob. Reneging on the deal, Kennedy unleashed his brother Bobby, the attorney general, on organized crime, the authors claim.

In 1975, Sam Giancana was gunned down while cooking sausage in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park home. The book says the CIA killed Sam Giancana to prevent him from telling a congressional committee about his role in CIA plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

These theories, scoffs Sam Giancana biographer Bill Brashler, "are as old as the Easter bunny. It's just silliness."

Brashler said Kennedy owed his election to the first Mayor Daley, not to the mob. And even if Sam Giancana felt betrayed, it wasn't the mob's style to murder politicians, much less the president. Finally, it was a trusted bodyguard who killed Sam Giancana, not the CIA. "It was a classic mob hit," Brashler said.

Brashler said he interviewed Antoinette Giancana for his book, The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana. He concluded she knew next to nothing about her dad's business.

The drifter who changed history

Antoinette Giancana said that for the new book she was able to recall long-buried memories during extensive interviews conducted by Jobe.

Conspiracy buffs have proposed 250 theories to explain what "really" happened Nov. 22, 1963, said Ruth Ann Rugg of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a JFK assassination museum in Dallas.

But Rugg said the only credible explanation is that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot Kennedy. Conspiracy theorists simply can't accept that such an insignificant drifter changed history by himself. "We want to believe that there was more to it, that there were huge forces involved," Rugg said.

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Would you really believe someone dressed like this?




Don Cardi

She looks pretty!!!

Actually she was a very nice lady. A little "out there" but harmless.


Don Cardi

Assuming thats you, Don Cardi, can I ask how that meeting came about?

No, that's not me.

That's from the Goldan Age Of Gangsters Convention in Chicago that I, along with several other members from these boards, attended back in 2004.

I believe that the gentleman in the pictures name is Michael Bell, an artist who draws/paints pictures of infamous mobsters.


Don Cardi

I actually find Brashler's comments more credible than Giancana's.

I find the comment about her remembering "long-buried memories during extensive interviews conducted by Jobe" to be cart full of horse sh*t.

Many political pundits have long believed Daley was less concerned about the 1960 presidential election and more concerned with delivering the votes for his own political machine -- getting officials elected in other key positions to benefit the Democratic Party in Chicago. The national election was just a side show in the political circus of democratic Chicago politics. And Daley would gladly take credit for the outcome.

The circumstantial evidence would point to a mob hit on Sam and NOT some CIA operation...though you could argue the evidence is circumstantial and could have been arranged to make us think one thing and not another. The weapon was actually found...tossed in an area where you might suspect that it would eventually be found...as opposed to being destroyed or more diligently disposed of. And the area where it was found was on a path from Sam's house, located at the south end of Oak Park, back towards River Forest or Elmwood Park, where "upper management" made their homes. Bill Roemer theorizes that Butch Blasi did the hit, was driving home and got spooked by a passing police car and tossed the gun out the window of his car and into the woods. Butch was Sam's former driver, was seen entering the house that evening, and was tight with and loyal to Accardo after Sam fell out of favor and left for Mexico.

I've always believed The Princess was capitalizing on the family name and has no real knowledge of her father's business. Like many of us, she only knows what she reads.

tony b.

It's most unlikely that Giancana or anyone in the Mafia ever contributed a dime to JFK's campaign:
JFK was a member of Sen. John McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and Bobby Kennedy was its chief counsel when the subcommittee, at Bobby's urging, began investigating organized crime's infiltration of labor unions. That's when Bobby started his famous war with Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters Union. When Giancana appeared as a witness before the subcommittee in 1958 and constantly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, Bobby taunted him for his giggling: "I thought only little girls giggled." Giancana never forgot that insult. Not surprisingly, the Teamsters Union supported Nixon for President in 1960. Hoffa was very close to Giancana, and if Momo raised any money for anyone in 1960, it was probably for Nixon. Does anyone really think that a Mafia boss would try to elect the brother of a man who likened him to a "little girl"?

The story of almighty Mayor Daley swinging Illinois for JFK is far more convincing. Illinois was one of three states that JFK stole in 1960. Democratic National Chairman John Bailey delivered Connecticut, a nominally GOP state, for JFK. After Nixon ran up an impressive lead in the downstate Illinois vote, the Chicago vote arrived at a late hour--with a huge margin for JFK. It seemed that a lot of voters voted "early and often," including many who had apparently risen from the grave to cast ballots. Mayor Daley was one of JFK's earliest and most fervent supporters.

Lyndon B. Johnson stole Texas for JFK in an interesting way. Voting machines in Texas in 1960 were configured to discourage people from splitting their vote. If you voted Republican at the top of the ticket (he President/Vice President line) and wanted to vote Democratic on a lower line, you had to go out of the booth and ask a poll-watcher to reset the machine--a nuisance that inconvenienced everyone, including all those waiting behind you. LBJ was not only the Democratic VP nominee, he was also running for re-election to the Senate that same year, on a lower line. Many Texans preferred Nixon to Kennedy, but they wanted to return LBJ to the Senate because, as the all-powerful Majority Leader, he delivered tons of Federal money to the state. But they couldn't easily split their votes--so they reluctantly voted Democratic for Kennedy in order to vote for Johnson to return to the Senate.

Daley may not have been as interested in the national election, but he was always looking for ways to bolster the Democratic Machine's ticket. Kennedy reaped the benefits of that in a big way.