No less then Robert Blakely, architecht of RICO, believes the Mob, cheifly through Carlos Marcello, had a hand in the assasination of JFK.

I for one, do not. Neither does Jerry Capeci. But with the new book by Blakely having been released, im surprised how many people are latching on to it as if Blakely's theories are new & have only just now being examined.

I read Jim Garrisons book & loved it. Years later i learnt how Blakely had continued to publically link him with Marcello & in reciept of payoffs from turning blind to Marcello's various rackets.

Am i being naive in believing Garrisons account over Blakelys? I mean its Robert Blakely. But IMHO, the whole thing just smacks of a squalid CIA affair. Revenge for the Bay of Pigs & for intending to pull out of Vietnam. But just how peripheral was the mafia & Carlos Marcello to everything?
Im aware of Harvey Oswald's bookie uncle & the Jack Ruby/Giancana & Giancana/CIA connections but Occam's Razor tells me that the CIA & some pissed of Cubans engineered it.

I actually don't believe in the Cubans being behind it. They probably have been no more than a decoy.

If it was a conspiracy, which is think is likely, it has to be a CIA/Mafia thing.

I can definitely see Mafia members being involved, given that they were already in bed with the CIA in Operation Mongoose.

But to what extent? I doubt they were the architects behind it and the shooters were theirs, but they probably did something.

I believe in two theories.

1. It was a Mafia operation, but with the backing of the CIA. The CIA definitely had no problems with Kennedy disappearing from the scene. And besides, the Mafia had worked with the CIA on the plot to kill Castro and knew too much to seriously harm the CIA. So the CIA cooperated and turned a blind eye.

2. Obviously, a CIA operation in which the Mafia played a role, probably delivering the gunmen etc. In this scenario it was the Mafia cooperating with the CIA and not the other way around.

I strongly think the second theory is the most likely, if it was a conspiracy in the first place.

Madonne! There is no evidence of a conspiracy. None. Zippo. Read Bugliosi's or Posner's books and visit Dealey Plaza and that will put a period on conspiracy theories.

I'm not sure if it was indeed a conspiracy, but I definitely can't rule it out. You can recommend whatever you want, it's what you prefer to read about it ofcourse.

And I just visited Dealey Plaza on Google earth, still no stop on conspiracy theories though.

I don't know shit abou US history/politics past WW2.Why would the CIA have it in for Kennedy?

And Kennedy wanted to dismantle the CIA. And I believe he also was against expanding the war in Vietnam, infuriating his generals.

The Kennedy brothers had threatend to close the CIA. The CIA was working with Giancana to take out Castro and as a courier.

There might have been the maximum of 3 rogue CIA agents who were aware of the kennedy assasination. But the mob...Giancana for his help at getting Kennedy elected in Chicago and WV, Trafficante/Marcella for their associations with Kennedys father and harrasment by Bobby Kennedy had the motive to kill Kennedy.

The real key to the mob conspiracy with the CIA. Giancana/Roselli were scheduled to testify before a Congress on what they knew with the CIA and Kennedy.

They were both killed before they could testify and Giancana was guarded by the FBI the night he was killed.

No evidence of a conspiracy you say?

Fact: Jack Ruby did business with both Carlos Marcella and Trafficante. You think he just walked into the police station with a gun, found out where Oswald was going to be and whacked him on his own?

JFK screwed up in the Bay of Pigs. While he publicly accepted "full responsibility," he said privately (meaning: leaked to trusted reporters, off the record) that he wanted to "smash the CIA," thereby putting the blame on them. He eventually got rid of Allan Dulles and Richard Bissell, the architects of the Bay of Pigs, and appointed his own man, John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence. The CIA redeemed itself in JFK's esteem during the missile crisis. The CIA had no motivation to kill JFK.

The Mafia and Castro had motivation to kill JFK. But, while those and other conspiracy theories are good on motivation, they fall down when you start probing for details. The only thing I'm certain of is that we will never know what really happened, and why.

I believe it's pretty much disproven that Giancana helped the Kennedy's with getting votes in Chicago.



This is by far the biggest sign that there was a conspiracy. Giancana was protected 24/7 by agents, but suddenly they were called to leave and Giancana was whacked.



Kennedy wanted to "smash the CIA" is no motivation? Surely a lot of "generals" didn't weep when Kennedy was gone...



I find it really difficult to believe that the Mafia had the power to kill a president without getting caught if there wasn't any cooperation...

And could you please go into further detail about "they fall down when you start probing for details" ?

I agree that theories like vice-president Johnson ordering the assassination aren't plausible...

Richard Kuklinski killed JFK

LMAO

I believe former Bonanno acting boss, Salvatore Montagna had a hand in the JFK assassination. Don't ask me how I came to this conclusion, but I will defend it TOOTH AND NAIL!!!

I agree, Vinny. When people tell me Montagna was born in Canada, ten years after JFK's death, I tell them that's exactly what Sally Boy wants you to think .

Exactly. Fact of the matter is Sally was born in Brussels in 1915. It ain't my fault he has excellent genes.

So that's where the nickname "Sprouts" came from. But my uncle told me you're not even allowed to say it out loud. You have to mime picking a brussel sprout from the garden, while simultaneously tugging on your left earlobe.

I don't know how I got along before you signed up for this site.

The same as now.... you talk to yourself.

As I said in my original post, the CIA redeemed itself in JFK's eyes in the missile crisis. He was deliberately using strong language ("smash the CIA") to impress reporters that the CIA was responsible for the Bay of Pigs--when it was he who let himself be sold on that cockamamie plot. And anyway,JFK needed a global intelligence network at that critical time in the Cold War. He wasn't about to dump the entire CIA after getting rid of Dulles and Bissell. He gave RFK unofficial oversight of the CIA.




Sure!
Broadly, I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone or any group could have brought off assassinating the president and have gotten away with it all these years. Too many people would have had to have been involved, and the potential for screw-ups, loose lips, grudges, vengeance, etc., then and down the line would have been too great to keep the lid on all these years.

Also broadly: Who were the shooters? How did they get away? Where did they go afterward? How did the organization that arranged it benefit?

Both the Mafia and Castro had trained assassins that they could have used. Why would they involve borderline psychos like Oswald and Ruby, even if they were patsies? Far too dangerous to them.

And, it's unlikely that Giancana ever made a deal with JFK or his father to "deliver" Illinois in the 1960 election in return for "hands off" the Mafia. For one thing, JFK didn't need him--he already had Richard Daley, the all-powerful mayor of Chicago, promising to deliver the state by the tried-and-true method of having people vote "early and often." For another, Giancana hated the Kennedys because they humiliated him at a Senate hearing on organized crime and labor in 1959 (RFK, the committee's counsel, likened him to "a little girl"). Why would he be willing to do them a favor? [N.B.: The Teamsters, which Giancana dominated, endorsed Nixon in 1960.]

As for Castro: he needed JFK in the White House because JFK was the guarantor of the US agreement with the USSR that we would never again try to topple Castro, in return for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. At LBJ's reception following JFK's burial, the first thing the Soviet delegation asked him was if he intended to continue with JFK's pledge.

I want to be very careful of what I say now: The Warren Commission version represents the path of least resistance to closure in the JFK assassination. By putting the assassination on one borderline psycho, and by putting his murder on another, they neatly close the door to all the conspiracy theories--and all their problems. But I stop short of saying I believe the Warren Commission, because I'm not convinced. The only thing I believe is that we'll never know what really happened.

Priceless!

Since I've lived about 40 miles north of Dallas for over 4 deacdes, I may be the only Board member who has visted Dealey Plaza perhaps a dozen times. I also worked at the old Dallas city hall off Commerce St. in the latter 60s and traversed the parking garage under it innumerable times. I also visited the School Book Depository on numerous occasions as well as the movie house on Jefferson Ave. in Oak Cliff, LHO's Beckley St. rooming house, and walked the path he took along whichhe encountered Officer Tippit. Some of the information that Mark Lane et al have claimed since '66 to support their conspiracy theories doesn't work. Some of it is completely wrong. I wish I had a nickel for everyone of those books I've I've read.

As TB states, when you move beyond speculation, there is no evidence to support any other assassin except LHO or any conspiracy other than the one LHO concocted and acted on. There is only speculation. As I stated in another post, read Posner's and Bugliosi's works on the subject to start. Also, view the History Channel's and Discovery Channel's computer modeling of the assassination.

I actually have that Discovery documentary you're probably refering to and they have indeed proven that it "may" have been possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to hit Kennedy from the building he was in, if he would have been an expert hitman.

Furthermore, the documentary shows that spots like the bridge and the drain were pretty much impossible to hit the president and ends with saying that they have disproven every theory.

Ironically, they don't say anything about the most infamous spot, the grassy knoll, as if they weren't able to disproof that.

And that's just the number one place which would have been probably the best spot to hit the president. And there are plenty enough signs that shots came from there.

One things I just can't get out of my head. When you watch the Zapruder film you clearly see the president being hit at the front side of his head first instead of from the back. So called expert can say what they want, they can't convince with anything that he was hit from the back of his head first.

For me, this is the most convincing sign that there were more shooters than only Oswald.

And if it was a conspiracy, they most definitely would have used more than one assassin at multiple locations with the best spot probably being the grassy knoll.

I tend to believe in the theory that Oswald was in fact one of the assassins, probably a decoy, and there was a backup team at the grassy knoll to finish the job if Oswald missed.

I believe that Oswald did hit Kennedy with the so called "magic bullet", which is shown in the Discovery documentary. But the fatal shot probably came from the grassy knoll.

No, they do address it through their analysis of the Badge Man hypothesis. You have to visit Dealey Plaza to understand it (analogous to Rocco shooting Roth in the Miami Airport and expecting not to be noticed).

Kennedy's headwound is an exit wound, plain and simple.

Maybe one day, and that day may never come... I will visit Dealey Plaza.

And maybe I'll visit the Netherlands .

Can you get a good slice of pizza there?

Sure, we have plenty of pizzeria's, most are run by "zips". So if you're lucky they may even have some heroin for you in store.

In the book Doublecross, Sam Giancana's brother and Nephew lay out reasons why Giancana helped deliver WV and Chicago votes to Kennedy. According to them, Sam thought that if he did this then the Kennedys would owe him favor.

You do know that it has been proven that Kennedy and Sam Giancana shared the same mistress and she delivered messages back and forth (Judith Exner).

Giancana/Trafficante/Marcello all had the motive and means to kill Kennedy.
I think some rogue agents in the CIA provided intel on where Kennedy was going to be. The US Govt has whitewashed Oswalds and Rubys historys.