A meeting at Love Field?

[James Richards]

I was wondering if anyone could furnish any more details concerning the following. A journalist in Texas named John Moulder supposedly obtained an affidavit from a woman who claimed that she witnessed E. Howard Hunt, Richard Nixon, Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman together at Love Field at about 10:30am on the day JFK was assassinated.

The affidavit was taken after the Watergate incident as she remembered that the key players in that event were the same ones in Dallas.

Any information, thoughts or comment would be appreciated.

James

[Jack White]

John Moulder worked for the Fort Worth Press, and sometimes

contributed to the grocery store tabloids.

The Press has been defunct for many years. My first job

out of high school was with the Press.

Jack

[James Richards]

John Moulder worked for the Fort Worth Press, and sometimes

contributed to the grocery store tabloids.

The Press has been defunct for many years. My first job

out of high school was with the Press.

Jack

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, Jack.

Do you give Moulder and this story any credibility?

I should have mentioned before that the original information came from a 1977 issue of Newsreal Magazine. It was included in an article by Tom Lutz.

James

[Tim Gratz]

The supposed involvement of Colson IMO makes the story doubtful.

One could research Colson's bio to see what he was doing in 1963. I do not think he had yet connected with Nixon.

[Shanet Clark]

Nixon was in Dallas that morning, and flew to New York at about that time.

I believe Pepsi President Don Kendall was with him for the convention,

but I would like to hear more about a Howard Hunt/Richard Nixon meeting.

It does sound a bit fanciful to place Colson and Ehrlichman there as well,

but Colson looks a lot like LUCIEN CONEIN, does he not?

Edited March 29, 2005 by Shanet Clark

[Tim Gratz]

One ought to be able to verify when Nixon left Dallas.

He was in New York in a cab in downtown Manhattan when he was advised of the assassination.

10:30 a.m. Dallas time is of course 11:30 a.m. New York time.

This alone proves that Nixon was not in Dallas at 10:30 a.m. on November 22nd. To be back in New York I presume he must have taken the earliest possible flight out of Dallas (if in fact he left Friday am).

Edited March 29, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Lee Forman]

One ought to be able to verify when Nixon left Dallas.

He was in New York in a cab in downtown Manhattan when he was advised of the assassination.

10:30 a.m. Dallas time is of course 11:30 a.m. New York time.

This alone proves that Nixon was not in Dallas at 10:30 a.m. on November 22nd.  To be back in New York I presume he must have taken the earliest possible flight out of Dallas (if in fact he left Friday am).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry Tim,

Not following you. It's a 4 hour flight today. Does anyone have the time that Nixon arrived at Idelwild [Kennedy] airport?

Did he have use of his own form of special transportation? He could be seen at 10:30am CT, and in 4 1/2 hours be in New York at 4:00pm ET.

- lee

http://mtracy9.tripod.com/kennedy.html

In his autobiography, former president Richard Nixon claimed to remember where he was during another momentous event--the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nixon said that he first heard about Kennedy's death during a taxi ride in New York City. However, a United Press International photo taken that day tells a different story. The photo shows a "shocked Richard Nixon" (as the caption reads) having already learned of Kennedy's assassination upon his arrival at New York's Idlewild Airport--in other words, before his alleged taxi ride. Click to read Nixon's account Perhaps Nixon was trying to deflect attention from the fact that the plane he had arrived on had originated from Dallas, Texas. Indeed, Nixon (as he later admitted) had been in Dallas from November 20 to the 22. While in Dallas, Nixon had attended meetings with right-wing politicians and executives from the Pepsi-Cola company.

[Tim Gratz]

Lee, whether Nixon learned of the assassination upon his arrival at Idlewild, or in a cab from Idlewild enroute to his office at Mudge Rose in downtown Manhattan, in either case he must have arrived in New York City shortly after (if he learned of the assassination at Idlewild) or shortly before the assassination (if he did not learn of it at Idlewild but only during the cab ride) in either event he must have left Dallas early in the morning to have arrived in NYC by noon or shortly thereafter.

If my scenario is correct, it is interesting that his flight out must have been close to the arrival of Air Force One at Love Field.

Here is Nixon's account (from his Memoirs):

We drove through Queens toward the 59th Street Bridge, and as we stopped at a traffic light, a man rushed over from the curb and started talking to the driver. I heard him say, 'Do you have a radio in your cab? I just heard that Kennedy was shot.' We had no radio, and as we continued into Manhattan a hundred thoughts rushed through my mind. The man could have been crazy or a macabre prankster. He could have been mistaken about what he had heard; or perhaps a gunman might have shot at Kennedy but missed or only wounded him. I refused to believe that he could have been killed. As the cab drew up in front of my building, the doorman ran out. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. 'Oh, Mr. Nixon, have you heard, sir?' he asked. 'It's just terrible. They've killed President Kennedy.'"

Edited March 30, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Pat Speer]

Nixon was in Dallas that morning, and flew to New York at about that time.

I believe Pepsi President Don Kendall was with him for the convention,

but I would like to hear more about a Howard Hunt/Richard Nixon meeting.

It does sound a bit fanciful to place Colson and Ehrlichman there as well,

but Colson looks a lot like LUCIEN CONEIN, does he not?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

While this is all indeed a bit fanciful, it should be pointed out that Nixon always denied having had any contact with Hunt, even though Hunt insisted he'd met Nixon in the fifties. Hunt and Conein, on the other hand, were acknowledged acquaintances. Colson admits knowing Nixon from his VP days and recounts in Born Again a private meeting he had in Spring, 1964, so who knows? Similarly, Ehrlichman says he first met Nixon while working as an advance man on Nixon's 1960 campaign.

I find it highly doubtful Ehrilichman or Colson would have been involved in an assassination, beyond unknowingly passing info to Hunt. If Hunt was meeting Nixon face to face, there would have been no need for their presence.

[Lee Forman]

Lee, whether Nixon learned of the assassination upon his arrival at Idlewild, or in a cab from Idlewild enroute to his office at Mudge Rose in downtown Manhattan, in either case he must have arrived in New York City shortly after (if he learned of the assassination at Idlewild) or shortly before the assassination (if he did not learn of it at Idlewild but only during the cab ride) in either event he must have left Dallas early in the morning to have arrived in NYC by noon or shortly thereafter.

If my scenario is correct, it is interesting that his flight out must have been close to the arrival of Air Force One at Love Field.

Here is Nixon's account (from his Memoirs):

We drove through Queens toward the 59th Street Bridge, and as we stopped at a traffic light, a man rushed over from the curb and started talking to the driver.  I heard him say, 'Do you have a radio in your cab?  I just heard that Kennedy was shot.'  We had no radio, and as we continued into Manhattan a hundred thoughts rushed through my mind.  The man could have been crazy or a macabre prankster.  He could have been mistaken about what he had heard; or perhaps a gunman might have shot at Kennedy but missed or only wounded him.  I refused to believe that he could have been killed.  As the cab drew up in front of my building, the doorman ran out.  Tears were streaming down his cheeks.  'Oh, Mr. Nixon, have you heard, sir?' he asked.  'It's just terrible.  They've killed President Kennedy.'"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tim,

You are basing that upon Nixon's story of how he learned about the assassination, implying it was somewhere near 1:00pm, as that is when the shot(s) rang out that was (were) heard around the world. Me? I'd like to know when that photo was taken. Nixon denied having been in Dallas. There a lie right there.

Jim Phelps alleges on his website that the Bottling convention was arranged to force the location of the TradeMart to establish the route through Dealey Plaza. This was the reason, he alleges, for Nixon wanting his previous whereabouts unknown.

I don't remember if he added anything about the price of sugar and the impact on costs the lack of Cuban sugar presented to any major soda-pop manufacturers.

- lee

[Tim Gratz]

Lee, interesting post. I think the inference is that the news of the assassination came to NYC either shortly before or shortly after Nixon's arrival at Idlewild.

Your post reminds me of the old saying: "What does that have to do with the cost of tea in China" but substituting "the cost of sugar in Havana".

[Lee Forman]

Lee, interesting post.  I think the inference is that the news of the assassination came to NYC either shortly before or shortly after Nixon's arrival at Idlewild.

Your post reminds me of the old saying:  "What does that have to do with the cost of tea in China" but substituting "the cost of sugar in Havana".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey Tim,

I found a book for sale entitled, 'Everything you wanted to know about Nixon, but were afraid to ask.'

Prouty on the subject. Worth noting is that none of these stories appears to correspond very well with Nixon's memoirs. Prouty also seems to be confusing his time zones.

12:56pm ET = 11:56am CT. News of Kennedy having been shot, if heard over the radio, would be at what time? At the absolute earliest, it would have been broadcast at around 1:31pm ET. To arrive in New York, if it was indeed only a 4 hour flight in 1963, says Nixon would have had to have left at 8:00am CT at the earliest.

I saw elsewhere [Warren Report or a Goldwater article - I can look] that he was 'scheduled' to leave Dallas 2 hours before Kennedy arrived at Love Field. That would be between 9:38am and 9:50am, CT, as Kennedy arrived:

President Kennedy and party arrived Love Field at 11:38 a.m., CST, and at 11:50 a.m., CST

As per Special Agent Thomas L. Johns. http://jfkassassination.net/russ/m_j_russ/Sa-johns.htm

Leaving Dallas at 9:38am CT - 9:50am, assuming a 4 hour flight, puts him into New York at 2:38pm to 2:50pm ET.

http://www.prouty.org/nixon.html

Nixon's Three Stories of Where He Was on November 22, 1963

In the first place, strange things which could scarcely all be coincidence happened even before JFK was killed. On the morning of November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed the New York Times carried an item on a back page, It was datelined Dallas. And it said that ex-Vice-President Richard M. Nixon had made a speech in Dallas before a group of businessmen,

Not only did the Times carry that story on the very day JFK died, but Nixon was in Dallas the day Kennedy died, and it is very possible that he was still in Dallas at the moment Kennedy died. Despite all other reports to the contrary. And of course the thing that makes this so very important is that Nixon and others have for some reason tried to conceal that fact for more than twelve years.

By itself, this would not be important. Being in Dallas on November 22nd. 1963 does not make just anyone. for example, Nixon, a murderer; but the record of Nixon's visit to Dallas has been deliberately obscured. Let's pick three "official" versions of Nixon's actions that day and see how they compare and then what the differences may signify.

Story One

Not long after Kennedy was shot, Nixon wrote an unusually long article for the Reader's Digest. It appeared in the November 1964 issue under the strange title, "Cuba, Castro, and John F Kennedy." Prepared as it was by Nixon or for his signature and prepared for the massive worldwide audience of the August Reader's Digest, we are asked to believe that this is the factual account of what took place. Nixon says

"I urged, in a statement to the press [ Dallas on November 21 that the President and the vice-president be shown the respect to which their office entitled them."

Nixon added,

"I boarded a plane in Dallas on the morning of November 22 to New York. We arrived on schedule at 12:56. I hailed a cab. We were waiting for a light to change when a man ran over from the street corner and said that the President had just been shot in Dallas. This is the way that I learned the news."

Story Two

Now let's look at another Nixon account of the same day The November 1973 issue of Esquire magazine carried the following Nixon quote;

"I attended the Pepsi Cola convention [ in Dallas ]and left on Friday morning. November 22, from Love Field. Dallas, on a flight back to New York , . . on arrival in New York we caught a cab and headed for the city the cabbie missed a turn somewhere and we were off the highway . . . a woman came out of her house screaming and crying. I rolled down the cab window to ask what the matter was and when she saw my face she turned even paler. She told me that John Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas,"

Story Three

Now let's look at the "official" account from "The Day Kennedy was Shot, by Jim Bishop:"

"At Idlewild Airport now JFK Airport) in New York , reporters and photographers had been waiting for the American Airlines plane among (the passengers) was Nixon. As he got off the plane he thought that he would give 'the boys' basically the same interview he had granted in Dallas . Nixon posed for a few pictures . . . got into a taxi-cab was barely out of the airport when one of the reporters got the message: The President has been shot in Dallas."

Comparison

Now let's compare these. Nixon was in Dallas on November 22. The versions agree that he took some plane out in the morning Bishop says it was American Airlines and that it went into Idlewild. Nixon says that it landed precisely at 12:56 nearly one half-hour after Kennedy had been shot. Certainly the crew would have heard over their radio that the president had been shot and would have told their passengers. Then Bishop says reporters and photographers were there. Certainly they too would have known about Kennedy's murder by then. Everyone else in the world did. Bishop says the photographers took pictures. Where are they?

Nixon says he traveled to New York from Dallas with a friend. Who? And what is his story?

Nixon says he got in a cab, presumably well after 12:56. What cabbie in New York City would have not known the news by then? And then Nixon tells a strange story. The first time a man ran out to the cab with the news, and the second time the cab was "lost" and a woman ran out screaming and crying the news. These different accounts do not hold water.

With all of this very contrived series of accounts it looks as though someone has been fabricating a cover-up of Nixon's actions that day. Why?

The True Story

Actually, Nixon was in Dallas when JFK was shot. On April 2nd 1975 a young man was listening to a talk at his school when he heard the lecturer tell about the Esquire account of Nixon's trip to Dallas, and how and when Nixon had learned about JFK's death. That young man then told the lecturer, "My father was an executive for the Pepsi Cola Company, and he was in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 at that convention. He has told me that Nixon was there in Dallas at the convention when the announcement was heard that JFK had been killed, Nixon left later that afternoon,"

This young man is the son of Mr. Harvey Russel of the Pepsi Cola Company. When Mr. Russel was informed of his son's account, he agreed that his son's story was true. Mr. Russel confirmed that Nixon was attending that meeting at the time the shots were fired. He added Nixon was there representing the Pepsi Cola Company's law firm Mudge, Rose, Nixon et al. The Dallas newspapers stated that Nixon was attending a board meeting.

Mr. Russel confirmed that the session Nixon was attending broke up when the assassination news came through. Nixon then returned to his hotel and later in the afternoon had been driven to the Dallas airport by a Mr. Deluca, also a Pepsi Cola official.

These surprising series of events and the manner in which they unfolded after all these years underscore that there was something unusual about Nixon's visit to Dallas. Telephone calls to Deluca and again to Russel did little more than highlight their growing concern over the inadvertent disclosure of this story.

[Lee Forman]

No luck whatsoever in tracking down that UPI photo.

Great articles.

http://crimemagazine.com/03/richardnixon,1014.htm

Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up:

His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy

by Don Fulsom

Seared into the memories of all Americans who lived through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is exactly where they were on November 22, 1963. Yet private citizen Richard Nixon, who — believe it or not — was in Dallas, could not recall this fact in a post-assassination interview with the FBI.

The interview dealt with an apparently false claim by Marina Oswald that her husband —alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald — had targeted Nixon for death during an earlier trip to Dallas. A Feb. 28, 1964 FBI report on the interview said Nixon "advised that the only time he was in Dallas, Texas, during 1963 was two days prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

While Nixon eventually came clean regarding his whereabouts on that fateful day, he seemed touchy whenever the matter was raised. For example, in a 1992 interview with CNN's Larry King, Nixon interjected he was in Dallas "In the morning!" when King cited the presumed geographical coincidence. Nixon left Dallas on a flight to New York several hours before Kennedy's noontime arrival at Love Field.

Not only did Nixon misremember where he was on November 22nd, he made at least two conflicting statements about how he first learned his archrival had been shot. In a 1964 Reader's Digest article, he recalled hailing a cab after his Dallas-New York flight: "We were waiting for a light to change when a man ran over from the street corner and said that the President had just been shot in Dallas." In November of 1973, however, Nixon said in Esquire that his cabbie "missed a turn somewhere and we were off the highway...a woman came out of her house screaming and crying. I rolled down the cab window to ask what the matter was and when she saw my face she turned even paler. She told me that John Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas."

In yet another curious twist, a November 22nd wire service photo of Nixon indicates he might even have learned of the shooting before his cab ride. In the photo, a glum-looking Nixon, hat in lap, is sitting in what appears to be an airline terminal. The caption on the United Press International photo reads: "Shocked Richard Nixon, the former vice president who lost the presidential election to President Kennedy in 1960, is shown Friday after he arrived at Idlewild Airport in New York following a flight from Dallas, Tex., where he had been on a business trip."

In the 1992 King interview, Nixon maintained he'd never had any interest in digging into the JFK assassination: "I don't see a useful purpose in getting into that and I don't think it's frankly useful for the Kennedy family to constantly raise that up again."

Nixon's professed disinterest doesn't ring true, however, for it came from one of our snoopiest chief executives — a politician who just relished investigations, spying, secrets, and conspiracies. As Nixon aide John Ehrlichman once observed: "He was a conspiracy buff. He liked intrigue, and he liked secret maneuverings of the FBI, and he liked to hear about what the CIA did, and so on. He just couldn't leave that stuff alone."

As for Nixon's stated compassion for the Kennedys, let's not forget that he deeply despised them. So much so that, as president, he ordered chief White House spy E. Howard Hunt to forge diplomatic cables to make it look like President Kennedy ordered the murder of South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem. He sent another spy, Anthony Ulasewicz, to Chappaquiddick, Mass., to investigate the 1969 crash of a car driven by Edward Kennedy that killed the senator's female companion. He placed Sen. Kennedy under a 24-hour-a-day Secret Service surveillance in an effort, in Nixon's phrase, "to catch him in the sack with one of his babes." And Nixon pressed aides to plant a false story in the press linking Sen. Kennedy to the 1972 assassination attempt against Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

What did Nixon do in Dallas? He arrived on Nov. 20 to attend a board meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company, one of his law clients. Dallas reporter Jim Marrs says Nixon and actress Joan Crawford, a Pepsi heiress, "made comments to the effect that they, unlike the president, didn't need Secret Service protection, and they intimated the nation was upset with Kennedy's policies. It has been suggested that this taunting may have been responsible for Kennedy's critical decision not to order the Plexiglas top placed on his limousine on Nov. 22."

When adviser Stephen Hess saw Nixon that same afternoon at the former vice president's New York apartment, he said Nixon was "pretty shook up." Hess later portrayed his boss to political reporter Jules Witcover as unusually defensive about his pre-assassination comments in Dallas: "He had the morning paper, which he made a great effort to show me, reporting he had held a press conference in Dallas and made a statement that you can disagree with a person without being discourteous to him or interfering with him. He tried to make the point that he had tried to prevent it … It was his way of saying, ‘Look, I didn't fuel this thing.'"

What Nixon apparently failed to tell Hess was that the major story from his meeting with reporters in Dallas was certain to fuel the anger of some Texans toward Kennedy. The headline in the Dallas Morning News on November 22 said: "Nixon Predicts JFK May Drop Johnson." Vice President Lyndon Johnson was, of course, a Texan.

On the morning after the assassination, Nixon convened a meeting of Republican leaders at his New York apartment. Those assembled were "already assessing how this event would affect or recreate the possibilities of Nixon running for president," according to Hess.

Boasting that he was the mastermind of a Mob/CIA plot to kill President Kennedy, Chicago godfather Sam Giancana told relatives he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 to supervise that plot. Giancana claimed that both "Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson knew about the whole damn thing"— adding that he had met with both future presidents in Dallas "immediately prior to the assassination."

Giancana's half-bother Chuck and nephew Sam claimed in their 1992 book Double Cross that the Mafia don had a long, warm, and mutually rewarding relationship with Nixon that dated back to the 1940s. In those times, Giancana was helping Chicago Syndicate boss Anthony Accardo consolidate the city's rackets and gambling operations, and Nixon was a freshman congressman from California. In recounting for his relatives a big favor the congressman did for Giancana back then, the gangster established a direct link between Nixon and a Chicago hoodlum who later moved to Texas and went on to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald: "Nixon's done me some favors, all right, got us some highway contracts, worked with the unions and overseas. And we've helped him and his CIA buddies out, too. xxxx, he even helped my guy in Texas, (Jack) Ruby, get out of testifying in front of Congress back in forty-seven … By sayin' Ruby worked for him."

A 1947 memo, found in 1975 by a scholar going through a pile of recently released FBI documents, supports Giancana's contention. In the memo, addressed to a congressional committee investigating organized crime, an FBI assistant states: "It is my sworn testimony that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago ... is performing information functions for the staff of Congressman Richard Nixon, Republican of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in the aforementioned hearings." (Later in 1947, Rubenstein moved to Dallas and shortened his last name.) The FBI subsequently called the memo a fake, but the reference service Facts on File considers it authentic.

Undercover work for the young Congressman Nixon would have been in keeping with Ruby's history as a police tipster and government informant. In 1950, Ruby gave closed-door testimony to Estes Kefauver's special Senate committee investigating organized crime. Committee staffer Luis Kutner later described Ruby as "a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters." In exchange for Ruby's testimony, the FBI is said to have eased up on its probe of organized crime in Dallas. In 1959, Ruby became an informant for the FBI.

Ruby's old Chicago boss, Giancana, was murdered in his home in Oak Park, Ill., in 1975 — shortly before he was to have appeared before a Senate committee investigating assassinations. Seven .22-caliber bullets were blasted into his mouth and neck, Mob symbolism for "talks too much."

Giancana had never been adept at keeping secrets. When Mob/CIA hit teams were planning to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1960 — an operation reportedly overseen by Vice President Richard Nixon—Giancana's loose lips allowed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to discover the plans.

Lee Harvey Oswald was at his Dallas job as an order-filler at the Texas School Book Depository on Nov. 22. Shortly after shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, Oswald fled the crime scene. Later that afternoon, a policeman trying to arrest Oswald was shot to death. After a struggle with the armed Oswald in a movie theater, police apprehended him and charged him with the murders of both President Kennedy and the policeman.

In 1964, a presidential commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald — firing a rifle from a sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the depository — was Kennedy's sole assassin. The commission portrayed Oswald as a ''discontented'' loner whose "avowed commitment to Marxism and Communism" might have contributed to his deed. But the Warren Commission had not looked carefully at the alleged assassin's ties to the Syndicate. In New Orleans — where Oswald spent significant portions of his life — Oswald's uncle and substitute father was Charles "Dutz" Murret, an important bookie in godfather Carlos Marcello's gambling apparatus. Oswald's mother, Marguerite, dated members of Marcello's gang. Oswald friend David Ferrie worked for Marcello; had alleged ties to the CIA; and, in 1967, was named by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as a key JFK assassination plotter.

In 1979, a House committee differed with the commission's finding that Oswald acted alone. After a two-year study, the panel indicated there were at least two shooters, declared that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy," and it fingered the Mafia as having the "motive, means, and opportunity." Two top committee staffers — Robert Blakey and Richard Billings — later wrote of their conviction that "Oswald was acting in behalf of members of the Mob, who wanted relief from the pressure of the Kennedy administration's war on crime led by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy."

The two investigators flatly asserted that the president of the Mob-dominated Teamsters union, Jimmy Hoffa — along with Mob bosses Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana — planned and carried out the president's slaying. They said both Oswald and Ruby were Mafia-connected, and that Ruby silenced Oswald on orders from the Mob. In a recent book, former Mafia consigliere Bill Bonanno — the son of legendary New York godfather Joe Bonanno — also maintains that Hoffa, Marcello, Trafficante, and Giancana were involved in the JFK assassination.

In 2001, a scientific study supported the conclusion first propounded by the House committee in 1979: that sounds heard on police recordings from Dealey Plaza are consistent with a shot being fired from the famed grassy knoll — bolstering the panel's finding that Kennedy's murder probably resulted from a plot.

Jack Ruby was a busy man in Dallas on Nov. 22. Only hours before Kennedy's arrival, the debt-ridden striptease club operator met with Mafia paymaster Paul Jones. Shortly after Kennedy was shot, Ruby showed up at Parkland Hospital, where the president had been taken — though he later denied being there at that critical time. Minutes after Kennedy was pronounced dead, Ruby phoned Alex Gruber — an associate of one of Jimmy Hoffa's top officials, and a man with known connections to hoodlums who worked for racketeer Mickey Cohen. Ruby and Gruber had met 10 days earlier in Dallas. When he was arrested for killing Oswald two days later, Ruby had $2,000 on his person and authorities found $10,000 in his apartment.

On the evening of the 22nd, Ruby was hanging around on the same floor of the police station where Oswald was being questioned. He even attended the midnight police station press conference at which Oswald was trotted out briefly for the world to see. Ruby corrected the district attorney when he told reporters that Oswald belonged to the Free Cuba Committee, an anti-Castro outfit. Ruby pointed out that the D.A. had meant Fair Play for Cuba, a pro-Castro group.

Like Oswald, Ruby could well have been under the control of the Mob, especially of Marcello — whose territory extended to Dallas, and whose take from underworld activities in Louisiana alone at the time was put at $1 billion-a-year. Ruby had lifelong connections to the Mafia and was involved in slot machines and bookmaking operations under Marcello's command. In 1959, Ruby reportedly visited Mob boss Santos Trafficante in a Cuban prison. After Oswald's murder, Ruby's brother approached one of Jimmy Hoffa's lawyers to represent Ruby.

More than a dozen people claim to have seen Ruby and Oswald together during the four months prior to the Kennedy assassination. In 1994, Dallas reporters Ray and Mary La Fontaine claimed that, shortly after Oswald's arrest on Nov. 22, he told a cellmate that he and Ruby attended a meeting in a local hotel just days earlier.

CIA agent E. Howard Hunt — Richard Nixon's top confederate in past and future undercover operations — may also have been in Dallas the day President Kennedy was killed. During a 1985 trial in Miami, CIA operative Morita Lorenz testified that, on Nov. 21, at a Dallas motel, she saw Hunt pay money to another agency operative — Hunt pal and future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis. She maintained that, shortly after Hunt left, Jack Ruby showed up. Lorenz returned to her home in Miami that same night, but said Sturgis later told her what she had missed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963: "We killed the president that day."

The testimony came in a suit brought by Hunt against the right-wing newsletter Spotlight for printing a 1978 article titled, "CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying." The jury ruled in favor of the newsletter.

At one time, Lorenz was Fidel Castro's girlfriend. In 1959, Hunt and Sturgis had recruited her into the CIA with the goal of killing the Cuban leader. At the trial, Lorenz identified Hunt as Sturgis's CIA paymaster. She said that, on Nov. 21, Hunt gave Sturgis an envelope of cash at the Dallas motel after she and Sturgis arrived there to take part in what she was told was a "confidential" operation.

In a deposition for the Miami trial, a reporter testified he had once seen an internal CIA memo, dated 1966, which said: "Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963." That reporter — Joseph Trento — had co-authored a 1978 article for the Wilmington News Journal headlined: "Was Hunt in Dallas the Day JFK Died?" His piece contained speculation by "some CIA sources" that "Hunt thought he was assigned by higher-ups to arrange the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald."

In 1975, a JFK assassination researcher in Texas received from an anonymous source a copy of a brief handwritten Nov. 8, 1963 note to a "Mr. Hunt" purportedly from Oswald. The writer asked for "information concerding [sic] my position. I am asking only for information. I am asking that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else." Three handwriting experts found that the writing was that of Oswald. "Concerning" was also misspelled in a letter Oswald was known to have written in 1961.

That the note was meant for E. Howard Hunt makes sense. Oswald and Hunt once worked out of the same office building in New Orleans. On behalf of the CIA, Hunt had set up a dummy organization called "The Cuban Revolutionary Council" at 544 Camp Street — the same address Oswald put on pro-Castro leaflets he handed out. The same building also housed the detective agency of former FBI agent Guy Banister — who was associated with the CIA, the Mafia, Cuban exile leaders, and suspected JFK assassination plotter David Ferrie.

Ex-CIA agent Victor Marchetti has linked Hunt and Sturgis with Ferrie. Sturgis has claimed: that he knew Oswald; that documents existed at the CIA detailing the role of Ruby in the Kennedy killing; and that Oswald and Ruby once met in a hotel in New Orleans.

Though he was not in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Jimmy Hoffa played an important role in President Kennedy's murder, according to longtime Hoffa and Mob lawyer Frank Ragano, who detailed Hoffa's alleged involvement in 1994. Ragano said he carried a message from the Teamster's boss to a July 24, 1963 meeting with Marcello and Trafficante in New Orleans. The message: Hoffa "wants you to do a little favor for him. You won't believe this, but he wants you to kill John Kennedy. He wants you to get rid of the president right away."

Ragano said the facial expressions of the two Mob bosses "were icy. Their reticence was a signal that this was an uncomfortable subject, one they were unwilling to discuss." But Ragano said Trafficante, on his deathbed in 1987, confessed that he and Marcello did, indeed, follow through on Hoffa's "favor." Ragano quoted the ailing Mob chief as saying: "Who would have thought that someday he would be president and he would name his goddam brother attorney general? Goddam Bobby. I think Carlos xxxxed up in getting rid of Giovanni (John in Italian) — maybe it should have been Bobby."

Jimmy Hoffa hated John and Robert Kennedy as much as Richard Nixon did. Robert Kennedy had been trying to put Hoffa in jail since 1956, when he was staff counsel for a Senate probe into the Mob's influence on the labor movement. In 1960, Robert Kennedy said, "No group better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his lieutenants."

In the 1960 presidential election, Hoffa and his two million-member union backed Vice President Nixon against Sen. John Kennedy. Edward Partin, a Louisiana Teamster official and later government informant, eventually revealed that Hoffa met with Marcello to secretly fund the Nixon campaign — saying, "I was right there, listening to the conversation. Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash which was going to Nixon ... (Another half-million dollar contribution) was coming from Mob boys in New Jersey and Florida." The Hoffa-Marcello meeting took place in New Orleans on Sept. 26, 1960, and has been verified by William Sullivan, a former top FBI official.

Nixon lost the 1960 election, and Hoffa — thanks to Attorney General Robert Kennedy — soon wound up in prison for jury tampering and looting the union's pension funds of almost $2 million. But the Nixon-Hoffa connection was strong enough to last at least until Dec. 23, 1971—when, as president, Nixon gave Hoffa an executive grant of clemency, allowing Hoffa to serve just five years of a 13-year prison term.

Nixon apparently sprung Hoffa in exchange for a big underworld payoff.

A recently released FBI memo backs up an earlier claim by an FBI informant that James P. ("Junior") Hoffa — current head of the Teamsters — and racketeer Allen Dorfman delivered $300,000 in a black valise to a Nixon bagman at a Washington hotel to secure the elder Hoffa's release from the pen.

Breaking from clemency custom, Nixon did not consult the judge who had sentenced Hoffa. Nor did he pay any mind to the U.S. Parole Board — which had been warned by the Justice Department that Hoffa was Mob-connected. At the time, The New York Times called the clemency a "pivotal element in the strange love affair between the (Nixon) administration and the two-million-member truck union…" Former Mafia bigwig Joe Bonanno recently described Nixon's clemency for Hoffa as "a gesture — if ever there was one, of the national power (the Mob) once enjoyed."

President Nixon did put one restriction on Hoffa's freedom: He could never again, directly or indirectly, manage any union. The restriction — a favor to Hoffa's successor, Frank Fitzsimmons — was reputedly bought by a $500,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign by New Jersey Teamster leader Anthony Provenzano.

In July 1975, Hoffa vanished in a Detroit suburb and his body has never been found. Many federal and local investigators believe he was shot to death after being lured to a meeting with Provenzano. They speculate that Hoffa's body was taken away by truck, stuffed into a fifty-gallon drum — then crushed and smelted.

Newly released FBI documents show that, in 1978, federal investigators sought to force Nixon and Fitzsimmons to testify about events surrounding Hoffa's disappearance. The investigators had concluded that such testimony offered the last, best chance of solving the Hoffa mystery. But they accused top Justice Department officials of derailing their efforts to call the ex-president and the Teamster boss before a Detroit grand jury.

The records also reveal that FBI agents suspected the Nixon White House of soliciting $1 million from the Teamsters to pay hush money to the Watergate burglars. In fact, in early 1973 — when the Watergate cover-up was coming apart at the seams — aide John Dean told the president that $1 million might be needed to keep the burglary team silent. Nixon responded, "We could get that … you could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash, I know where it could be gotten." When Dean observed that money laundering "is the type of thing Mafia people can do," Nixon calmly answered: "Maybe it takes a gang to do that."

In August 1974, Nixon became the first president forced to quit the office. He did so as Congress prepared to impeach and expel him for a wide range of illegal activities and abuses of constitutional power he directed or concealed during the Watergate scandal. Forty Nixon administration officials were indicted or jailed. The president was named by a grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator. In what smacked of a sweetheart deal, one month after he stepped down, Nixon's handpicked successor — President Gerald Ford — granted him a complete pardon for all the presidential crimes he might have committed.

After spending more than a year brooding in self-exile at his walled estate in San Clemente, Calif., the very first post-resignation invitation Nixon accepted was from his Teamsters buddies. On Oct. 9, 1975, he played golf at a Mob-owned California resort with Fitzsimmons and other top Teamsters. Among those who attended a post-golf game party for Nixon were Anthony Provenzano, Allen Dorfman, and the union's executive secretary, Murray ("Dusty") Miller.

A convicted Mafia killer, Provenzano went on to become a prime suspect in Hoffa's disappearance. In the two months before President Kennedy's assassination, Jack Ruby was in telephone contact with Murray Miller, and with Barney Baker — who was once described by Robert Kennedy as "Hoffa's ambassador of violence." Ruby was also in touch with key figures from the Marcello, Trafficante, and Giancana crime families.

James P. "Junior" Hoffa has said, "I think my dad knew Jack Ruby, but from what I understand, he (Ruby) was the kind of guy everybody knew. So what?" JFK assassination authority Anthony Summers reasons, however, that — given Hoffa's record of threats against the lives of both John and Robert Kennedy — "the potential significance of such a connection is immense."

Mob experts connect Richard Nixon to Carlos Marcello — and to Jimmy Hoffa — through Nixon's earliest campaign manager and longest-serving adviser, Murray Chotiner. And they tie Nixon to Santos Trafficante through Nixon's best friend, Florida banker Bebe Rebozo. Mickey Cohen — one of the most notorious mobsters in Los Angeles — admitted rounding up underworld money for two early Nixon campaigns.

Charles Colson — Nixon's presidential emissary to the Teamsters — once raised the theory that Mafia bosses "owned" Rebozo and had gotten "their hooks into Nixon early." By the 1960s, FBI agents keeping tabs on the Mob had identified Rebozo as a "non-member associate of organized crime figures," it is now known. An off-the-books military probe conducted in the waning days of the Nixon presidency found "strong indications of a history of Nixon connections with money from organized crime," the chief investigator later revealed.

In an unpublicized presidential move, Nixon ordered the Justice Department to stop using the words "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" to describe the multi-billion dollar national crime syndicate. The president was roundly applauded when he boasted about his order at a private 1971 Oval Office meeting with some 40 members of the Supreme Council of the Sons of Italy. The group's Supreme Venerable, Americo Cortese, thanked Nixon for his moral leadership — declaring, "You are our terrestrial god."

The Nixon administration intervened on the side of Mafia figures in at least 20 trials. And it denied an FBI request to continue an electronic surveillance operation that was starting to penetrate Mob/Teamsters connections.

During the Nixon years, pressure from Washington eased off on Sam Giancana. And long-standing deportation proceedings against CIA-connected mobster Johnny Roselli were dropped. Without going into specifics, government lawyers explained in court that Roselli had performed "valuable services to the national security." A Giancana henchman, Roselli was an important contact man in the Mob/CIA assassination plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Roselli and Jack Ruby are reported to have met in hotels in Miami during the months before the JFK assassination. Years later, Roselli told columnist Jack Anderson: "When Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald . . ."

In the mid-‘70s, as congressional committees probed the Mob and the CIA, Roselli was dismembered, squeezed into an oil drum, and tossed off the Florida coast; Giancana was gunned down in his kitchen; and Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.

Back in the Eisenhower years, Vice President Richard Nixon and CIA agent E. Howard Hunt were principal secret planners of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that failed so miserably when it was later launched by President Kennedy. Some historians are convinced Nixon was a prime mover in an associated — and also ill-fated — plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. For example, onetime Nixon aide Roger Morris says Nixon "had been an avid supporter of the Eisenhower administration's covert operations to overthrow Castro, including the alliance with organized crime to assassinate the Cuban leader." For his part, Hunt has readily admitted his role in efforts to murder Castro.

For the "executive action" mission, potential assassins were recruited from Mafia ranks, so that if any of their activities were disclosed, organized crime could be blamed.

Nixon confidant Robert Maheu fronted for the CIA on the Mob plots. A high-end private eye (and ex-FBI undercover operative) who functioned in the shadowy realm between U.S. intelligence services and the national criminal syndicate, Maheu had performed previous "dirty tricks" for both Nixon and Giancana. Hoffa had also been a client of Maheu, who would eventually become the top aide to Mob-and CIA-connected billionaire and Nixon financial angel Howard Hughes.

The hit on Castro was to have been carried out at the same time as the secret Nixon-Hunt plan for the invasion by CIA-trained exiles. The invasion was a military debacle when later ordered by President Kennedy — who publicly accepted full responsibility for the April 17, 1961 landing in which 1,500 exiles were quickly overwhelmed by some 20,000 Cuban troops. Convinced, however, that the CIA set him up, Kennedy fired CIA chief Allen Dulles — an old Nixon friend — and swore he'd dismantle the agency.

Nixon, Hunt, and many CIA and Cuban exile leaders pinned almost complete blame for the military catastrophe on Kennedy for not providing adequate air cover. At the time, Nixon told a reporter it was "near criminal" for Kennedy to have canceled the air cover. Privately, he must have been just as upset that Castro had not been bumped off. In one of his many books, Hunt later accused the president of "a failure of nerves."

Nixon's secret Mafia buddies, already enraged by Kennedy's anti-crime crusade in this country, were furious that their lucrative gambling casinos — shuttered by Castro — would not be returning to Cuba.

E. Howard Hunt, of course, went on to become President Nixon's chief dirty trickster and secret intelligence operative. In 1972, five Hunt-recruited former CIA men — all veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion planning — were caught by police while burglarizing Democratic headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington. Fearing that Hunt's role would soon be learned — and the burglary traced back to the White House —Nixon immediately set out to blackmail the CIA into halting an FBI investigation of the break-in. He had his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, tell CIA Director Richard Helms that Hunt, if apprehended, might spill the beans about a major CIA secret. On one of the original Watergate tapes, the president rehearsed Haldeman on exactly what to tell the intelligence chief: "Hunt knows too damned much ... If this gets out that this is all involved ... it would make the CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing ... which we think would be very unfortunate for both the CIA and the country ... and for American foreign policy."

In a generally overlooked revelation in a post-Watergate book, Haldeman said: "It seems that in all those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination. (Interestingly, an investigation of the Kennedy assassination was a project I suggested when I first entered the White House. Now I felt we would be in a position to get all the facts. But Nixon turned me down.)" Haldeman added that the CIA pulled off a "fantastic cover-up" that "literally erased any connection between the Kennedy assassination and the CIA."

On a White House tape made public in the 1990s, Haldeman fingered Nixon as the source of his information that the CIA had reason to fear Hunt's possible disclosure of "Bay of Pigs" secrets. The newest Nixon tapes are studded with deletions — segments deemed by government censors as too sensitive for public scrutiny. "National Security" is cited. Not surprisingly, such deletions often occur during discussions involving the Bay of Pigs, E. Howard Hunt, and John F. Kennedy.

One of the most tantalizing nuggets about Nixon's possible inside knowledge of JFK assassination secrets was buried on a White House tape until 2002. On the tape, recorded in May of 1972, the president confided to two top aides that the Warren Commission pulled off "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated." Unfortunately, he did not elaborate. But the context in which Nixon raised the matter shows just how low he could stoop in efforts to assassinate the character of his political adversaries.

The Republican president made the "hoax" observation in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt against White House hopeful George Wallace, a longtime Democratic governor of Alabama. The attempt left Wallace paralyzed below the waist. Nixon blurted out his comments about the falsity of the Warren findings in the middle of a conversation in which he repeatedly directed two of his most ruthless aides, Bob Haldeman and Chuck Colson, to carry out a monumental dirty trick. He urged them to plant a false news story linking the would-be Wallace assassin — Arthur Bremer — to two other Democrats, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. George McGovern —possible Nixon opponents in that year's fall elections. "Screw the record," the president orders on at one point. "Just say he was a supporter of that nut (it isn't clear which of the two senators he is referring to). And put it out. Just say we have an authenticated report."

As well as helping to perpetuate the Kennedy assassination "hoax" by turning down Haldeman's proposal for a new JFK probe, Nixon had a major hand in perpetrating it. In November of 1964, on the eve of the official release of the Warren Report, private citizen Nixon went public in support of the panel's coming findings. In a piece for Reader's Digest, he portrayed Oswald as the sole assassin. And Nixon implied that Castro — "a hero in the warped mind" of Oswald — was the real culprit.

Why did Nixon declare his belief in Oswald's guilt just before publication of the commission's report? Was he acting in league with his old buddies at the CIA and the FBI — as well as in the best interests of the Mob — to give advance support to what they knew would be the report's lone-killer conclusion? And why did Nixon stress Castro's alleged hold over Oswald's thinking? Was he trying to ramp up enthusiasm for further efforts to topple the Cuban leader?

In an apparent slip of the lip that got little attention at the time, a Watergate-stressed President Nixon himself suggested there was a conspiracy behind the JFK assassination. In the summer of 1973, the president publicly raised the assassination issue to divert attention from recent disclosures of a widespread government wiretapping operation. He claimed that Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, had authorized a larger number of wiretaps than his own administration. "But I don't criticize it," he declared, adding, "if he had ten more and — as a result of wiretaps — had been able to discover the Oswald Plan, it would have been worth it."

Whoops! The president apparently didn't realize his reference to "the Oswald Plan" didn't square with the government's official lone-killer finding. For if Lee Harvey Oswald had been solely responsible for the assassination, then there would not have been anyone for Oswald to conspire with about his "plan" — on a bugged telephone, or otherwise. Was Nixon inadvertently revealing his knowledge that Mob leaders (Robert Kennedy's main wiretap targets) had a role in President Kennedy's slaying? Was such a belief based on information acquired as a result of Nixon's own solid ties to organized crime and the Mafia-infested Teamsters union?

In the late 1970s, the House assassinations committee studied FBI electronic surveillance of the Mob over several months just before and after the JFK assassination. It found what Mob expert Ron Goldfarb has described as "expressions of outrage and betrayal and comments about ‘wacking out Kennedy.'"

That's because the Syndicate's tentacles had briefly entangled John F. Kennedy too. In crucial ways, the Mafia had helped the Massachusetts senator gain the presidency in 1960 — in exchange for a go-easy attitude toward the Mob by the future Kennedy administration. Instead of keeping his end of the bargain, however, President Kennedy started waging war on the Mafia — and the godfathers went crazy with rage.

Of all the illegal activities undertaken by President Nixon's secret agents E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, one stands out as particularly sordid — the planned assassination of newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, Nixon's arch foe in the media. Nixon-era stories by Anderson about mobster Johnny Roselli (the Mafia's liaison with the CIA) and various Mob/CIA plots infuriated the president and led to White House discussions about the columnist's murder.

The plot against Anderson came to light in 1975 when The Washington Post reported that — "according to reliable sources" — Hunt told associates after the Watergate break-in that he was ordered to kill the columnist in December 1971 or January 1972. The plan allegedly involved the use of poison obtained from a CIA physician. The Post reported that the assassination order came from a "senior official in the Nixon White House," and that it was "canceled at the last minute . . . "

In an affidavit about a key meeting on the matter with his White House boss, Hunt said Charles Colson "seemed more than usually agitated, and I formed the impression that he had just come from a meeting with President Nixon."

Liddy admitted that he and Hunt had "examined all the alternatives and very quickly came to the conclusion the only way you're going to be able to stop (Anderson) is to kill him . . . And that was the recommendation." Shortly after the Watergate break-in in 1972, Liddy offered to be assassinated himself, if that would help the cover-up. He told White House counsel John Dean: "This is my fault … And if somebody wants to shoot me on a street corner, I'm prepared to have that done." In a 1980 legal case, Liddy testified that there even came a time during the Nixon presidency "when I felt I might well receive" instructions to kill E. Howard Hunt — adding, "I was prepared, should I receive those orders, to carry them out immediately."

An ends-justify-the-means operator, Richard Nixon ran a pro-Mafia administration that carried out an ambitious criminal agenda of its own — one that even countenanced murder. Wouldn't his Mob connections have at least provided Nixon with inside dope —if not advance knowledge — about the murder of his archrival? Is that why Nixon — a major beneficiary of President Kennedy's assassination — concealed his knowledge of what really happened in Dallas on that tragic November day 40 years ago? Is that why, as president, he turned down a new JFK assassination inquiry — even while secretly dismissing the Warren Report as a fraud? After all, it was not in Nixon's best interests — nor in those of his chief patrons, Jimmy Hoffa and the Mob — to have the public learn the truth.

If President Nixon knew that the government's official 1964 conclusions about John F. Kennedy's murder were faked, didn't he at least have the responsibility to set the record straight? Did his failure to do so make him placidly complicit in that crime too?

Watergate may not have been Nixon's biggest cover-up after all.

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A Timeline of Nixon's Ties to the Kennedy Assassination

Nov. 1946: Nixon wins a House seat with financial help from Meyer Lansky and other Mob leaders. Nixon's campaign manager, Murray Chotnier, has top Mafia figures as legal clients—as well as ties to New Orleans Mafia chief Carlos Marcello and Mob-connected Teamsters official James Hoffa.

1947: Congressman Nixon intervenes to get Jack Ruby excused from testifying before a congressional committee investigating the Mafia, according to an FBI memo discovered in the 1970s.

1947: Nixon strongly backs legislation establishing the Central Intelligence Agency. Around this time, Nixon meets CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.

1950: The Senate Kefauver committee staff learns that Ruby was "a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters," a former committee staffer later discloses.

Nov. 1950: Nixon is elected to the Senate from California after suggesting his opponent was a communist sympathizer.

Nov. 1952: As Dwight Eisenhower's running mate, Senator Nixon is elected vice president— despite a scandal over a secret slush fund put together by wealthy California backers.

Nov. 1956: Eisenhower is re-elected president with Nixon as his vice president.

1959-1960: Vice President Nixon and CIA agent E. Howard Hunt are key figures in secret CIA efforts to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Nixon reportedly is the chief mover behind an associated CIA/Mob plan to murder Castro. Hunt later admitted his role in Castro assassination plots.

Summer of 1960: The CIA asks Nixon crony Robert Maheu—a former FBI agent with Mob contacts—to find mobsters who might be able to pull off a hit on Castro.

Nov. 1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy defeats Nixon in a 1960 presidential cliff-hanger; after his January 1961 inauguration, the new president goes ahead with secret Nixon-Hunt plans for a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba.

April 1961: The amphibious invasion at the Bay of Pigs is a monumental failure; Nixon, CIA, and Cuban exile leaders blame Kennedy for withholding planned U-S air cover. Kennedy privately blames the CIA and threatens to dismantle the agency.

Nov. 1961: Kennedy fires Nixon buddy Allen Dulles as CIA chief.

Nov. 1962: Nixon is defeated for governor of California after a secret $205,000 "loan" from Mob-linked billionaire Howard Hughes to Nixon's brother becomes a major issue; Nixon soon moves to New York and becomes a corporate lawyer.

1962-63: Angered by CIA incompetence during the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy moves to limit the agency's power.

Summer of 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA- and Mob-linked David Ferrie are seen together in Clinton, La., the House assassinations committee later learns in testimony from numerous witnesses.

July 23, 1963: Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa tells his lawyer, Frank Ragano, "Something has to be done. The time has come for your friend (Santos Trafficante) and Carlos (Marcello) to get rid of him, kill that son-of-a-bitch John Kennedy."

Nov. 8: Oswald allegedly writes a note to a "Mr. Hunt" asking for "information."

Nov. 21: CIA agent Hunt is spotted in Dallas at the same CIA "safe house" also visited that day by Jack Ruby and Frank Sturgis, according to testimony in a 1985 court case.

Nov. 21: Ostensibly in Dallas to attend a Pepsi Cola convention, Nixon asks the city to give President Kennedy a respectful welcome.

Nov. 21: Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana meets with Nixon in Dallas to discuss the planned Kennedy assassination, Giancana later tells relatives.

Nov. 22: Nixon leaves Dallas, apparently before Kennedy's arrival.

Nov. 22: President Kennedy is murdered in Dallas.

Nov. 24: Ruby kills Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police jail.

1963: Nixon recommends Congressman Gerald Ford for the Warren Commission.

1964: Nixon lies to the FBI about being in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

1964: Ford convinces the commission to alter a key finding—making its preposterous "single bullet" assassination theory slightly more believable, documents released in 1997 show. The theory held that one of the bullets struck Kennedy in the back, came out his neck, and then somehow critically wounded Texas Governor John Connally. Ford's change placed the back wound higher in Kennedy's body.

1964: Nixon and Ford write articles in advance of Warren Commission Report endorsing its anticipated conclusion that Oswald alone was responsible for Kennedy's assassination.

Sept. 1964: The Warren Report finds that Oswald—firing from a sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository—was President Kennedy' sole assassin.

Nov. 1968: In a squeaker, Nixon is elected president with big support from the Teamsters union and the Mob.

1971: After a Mob payoff of at least $300,000, Nixon grants clemency to Hoffa—who had been jailed for jury tampering in 1967.

June 1971: Former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt secretly joins the Nixon White House as the president's chief spy.

May 1972: Nixon confides to two top aides that the Warren Report was "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated," a White House tape released in 2002 reveals.

June 17, 1972: A group of burglars working for Nixon's re-election is caught by Washington, D.C. police while breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex. Hunt and former FBI official G. Gordon Liddy are soon identified as the group's supervisors.

June 23, 1972: To gain CIA help in the Watergate cover-up, Nixon tries to blackmail CIA chief Richard Helms over the secrets that Hunt might blab regarding CIA's links to "the Bay of Pigs"—which top Nixon aide Bob Haldeman later reveals to be Nixon/CIA code for the JFK assassination.

Nov. 1972: In a landslide, Nixon is re-elected president with the help of a reported $1 million Teamsters' contribution.

May 1973: Haldeman reminds Nixon that he—Nixon himself—had informed him that the CIA was hiding big "Bay of Pigs" secrets—though this was not disclosed until 1996, when the National Archives released a new batch of Watergate tapes. Sections of numerous Nixon conversations dealing with "the Bay of Pigs," President Kennedy, and E. Howard Hunt are deleted for "National Security" reasons.

1973: Nixon picks Congressman Ford to succeed the disgraced Spiro Agnew as his new vice president.

August 1974: Nixon is forced to resign the presidency over the Watergate scandal.

September 1974: President Ford grants Nixon a pre-emptive pardon for all crimes he might have committed.

Chapter 4

How It All Began - The U-2 and the Bay of Pigs

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp4.html

      To understand the origins of the Power Control Group, it is necessary to return to the last years of the Eisenhower administration and examine what was going on in the Cold War.

      Eisenhower had suffered several strokes and a heart attack. He was partially immobilized, and entrusted a major share of the coordination of clandestine activities being conducted by the CIA against the "Red Menace" to Richard Nixon, his vice president. While Ike was warning against the military-industrial-complex's domestic influence, and attempting to move toward detente with the Soviets through a summit meeting, he was being sabotaged by the plans section of the CIA and by Richard Nixon.

      A part of the CIA arranged for a U-2 with Gary Powers as pilot to go down over Russia, thus giving Khrushchev a chance to expose American spying and to cancel the summit meeting. This was one of the earliest moves of the nucleus of what later evolved into the Power Control Group. In the spring of 1960, with Ike nearly senile and pressured by Nixon, he approved the plan for the invasion of Cuba and the assassination of Castro. Nixon was the chief White House action officer for what later became the Bay of Pigs invasion.

      The Power Control Group was beginning to organize itself with Nixon as part of it. The cold warriors and strong anti-Communist "patriots" in the Plans or Operations part of the CIA formed the original nucleus.

      Their plan was to make Nixon president in 1961 and to launch a successful takeover of Cuba. John Kennedy came along to upset the plan. Not only did he make the takeover impossible but he soon discovered the evils lurking in the hearts and minds of the CIA clandestine operators and laid his own plans to destroy them. The assassination of John Kennedy essentially became an act of survival for some of these individuals.

      Many citizens of America have forgotten that Richard Nixon was Vice President of the United States in 1959 and 1960. As an old anti-communist from the Alger Hiss and Khrushchev debating days, Nixon was in the forefront of pressure for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. What is also forgotten is that Nixon was largely responsible for the covert training of Cuban exiles by the CIA in preparation for the Bay of Pigs. (He stated this in his book, Six Crises.)

      Nixon's Lies -- October 1960. Mr. Nixon's capacity for truth is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than by the deliberate lies he told during the election campaign on national TV on October 21, 1960. He said in his book that the lies were told for a patriotic reason -- to protect the covert operations planned for the Bay of Pigs at all costs. The significance of this is that Mr. Nixon considers patriotism to be, in part, the protection of plans and actions of individuals that he considered to be working for the United States' best interests.

      The similarities between the actions of Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., James McCord, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, and others in the 1960 planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the 1972 planning for the re-election of Richard M. Nixon are very striking. In both cases, what the plotters themselves considered to be patriotic, anti-Communist actions were involved. In 1960 the actions were directed against Fidel Castro, a man they hated as a Communist. In 1972 the actions were directed against Edward Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. Bernard Barker stated the group's collective belief when he said after his arrest that, "We believe that an election of McGovern would be the beginning of a trend that would lead to socialism and communism, or whatever you want to call it."

      Nixon admitted lying to the American people to protect Hunt, Barker, Sturgis, and McCord in 1960. The likelihood that he lied to protect them again in 1972 seems to be quite good. There is some likelihood that he actually hired the same old crew he trusted from the Bay of Pigs days for the 1972 Watergate and other espionage activities.

      Here are the facts:

Nixon's Statements in Six Crises

      Richard Nixon stated in Six Crises: "The covert training of Cuban exiles by the CIA was due in substantial part, at least, to my efforts. This had been adopted as a policy as a result of my direct support."[1] "President Eisenhower had ordered the CIA to arm and train the exiles in May of 1960. Nixon and his advisors wanted the CIA invasion to take place before the voters went to the polls on November 8, 1960."[2]

      While the Bay of Pigs operation was under the overall CIA direction of Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. was the CIA man in charge, according to Ross & Wise.[3] Charles Cabell,[4] the deputy director of the CIA, and a man with the code name Frank Bender, were also near the top of the operational planning.[5]

E. Howard Hunt

      Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was in charge of the actual invasion. He used the code name, "Eduardo." Bernard L. Barker, using the code name "Macho," worked for Hunt in the CIA Bay of Pigs planning. James McCord was an organizer for the invasion and was one of the highest ranking officials in the CIA. Frank Sturgis, alias Frank Fiorini, was also involved in the Bay of Pigs operations. Virgilio Gonzales was a CIA agent active in the Bay of Pigs. So was Eugenio Martinez. Charles Colson was a former CIA official who knew McCord and Hunt during the Bay of Pigs period.[6]

      Hunt, Barker, McCord, Sturgis, Gonzales, and Martinez were under indictment for the Watergate affair. Colson was Nixon's special counsel who handled "touchy" political assignments. According to Time magazine, Colson brought all of the others into the re-election committee espionage project at the request of Nixon.[7]

      In other words, it was basically the same group who worked for Nixon, Bissell and Co. in 1960 and who worked for Nixon, Colson and Co. in 1972. They were all loyal, patriotic, anti-Communist, and anti-Castro CIA agents with covert (black) espionage training. They needed Nixon's protection in 1960 and 1972, and they received it both times.

      Here is how Nixon protected them in 1960.[8]

Kennedy-Nixon Debates, 1960

      John Kennedy and Richard Nixon engaged in a series of national TV debates during the 1960 campaign. Kennedy was briefed by Allen Dulles, head of the CIA at Eisenhower's request, on secret CIA activities and international problems on July 23, 1960. Nixon was not aware of the briefing contents and was not sure whether Dulles told Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs plans. As it turned out Dulles had not mentioned the plans but had kept his remarks about Cuba rather general.

      On October 6, 1960, Kennedy gave his major speech on Cuba. He said that events might create an opportunity for the U.S. to bring influence on behalf of the cause of freedom in Cuba. He called for encouraging those liberty-loving Cubans who were leading the resistance against Castro.

      Nixon became very disturbed about this because he felt Kennedy was trying to pre-empt a policy which he claimed as his own. Nixon ordered Fred Seaton, Secretary of the Interior, to call the White House and find out whether Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the Cuban invasion plans. Seaton talked to General Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower's link to the CIA, who told Seaton that Kennedy did know about the Bay of Pigs plans.

Attack on Kennedy by Lying

      Nixon became incensed. He said, "There was only one thing I could do. The covert operation had to be protected at all costs. I must not even suggest by implication that the U.S. was rendering aid to rebel forces in and out of Cuba. In fact, I must go to the other extreme: I must attack the Kennedy proposal to provide such aid as wrong and irresponsible because it would violate our treaty commitments."[9]

      So Richard M. Nixon actually went on national TV (ABC) on October 21, 1960, knowing we were going to invade Cuba, and lied. During the fourth TV debate, Nixon attacked Kennedy's proposal as dangerously irresponsible and in violation of five treaties between the U.S. and Latin America, as well as the United Nations' Charter.[10]

      On October 22 at Muhlenberg College, Nixon really turned on the fabrication steam. He said, "Kennedy called for -- and get this -- the U.S. Government to support a revolution in Cuba, and I say that this is the most shockingly reckless proposal ever made in our history by a presidential candidate during a campaign -- and I'll tell you why . . ."

      The reason we should have taken with a grain of salt whatever words Nixon uttered about Watergate and Donald Segretti's espionage is clearly demonstrated in that October 22, 1960 speech. He fiercely attacked John Kennedy for advocating a plan that he, Richard Nixon, secretly advocated and claimed as his own creation. He later had the sheer gall to brag about it in his own book as a very patriotic act.

Protection of Hunt and Co.

      How was Nixon protecting Hunt and company in 1972? He was using the Justice Department and the Republican Congressmen, among others, to delay and dilute the prosecution of the Watergate seven. He had slowed down, suppressed, and all but stopped six separate investigations, suits, and trials of the affair. Included were Wright Patman's House Banking Committee investigation, the FBI-Justice Department investigation, a White House investigation by John Dean, a General Accounting Office investigation, a suit by the Democratic Party, and a trial in criminal court of the seven invaders. Only two trials or investigations had a chance of exposing the truth at that time. One of these, a trial of Bernard Barker in Florida was not much help. The other was an investigation promised by Senator Edward Kennedy and his Senate subcommittee. It never occurred. The action for impeachment came much later.

      Thus, the stage was set in 1961 for the group of powerful individuals who had planned the Bay of Pigs to gain revenge on John Kennedy who tried to change the overall direction of the U.S. battle against Communism. After JFK refused to approve overt U.S. backing of the Bay of Pigs invasion, various individuals in the clandestine CIA forces vowed their revenge.

      In the spring of 1961, evidence had appeared indicating that Helms, Hunt, Sturgis and Barker tried to have JFK assassinated in Paris.[11] When the attempt failed, a number of other plots and sub-plots developed through the next two years. After JFK's blockade strategy against Castro during the missile crisis in 1962 was implemented, some of the high-level CIA and armed forces people wanted even more to get him out of the White House. They had favored a direct invasion or bombing of Cuba.

      And finally, when JFK found out about the CIA's plans for another invasion of Cuba in the spring and summer of 1963 and stopped them, they began in earnest to plan his death.

__________

Six Crises, Richard M. Nixon, Doubleday, 1962.

The Invisible Government, Wise & Ross, Random House, 1964.

Ibid.

Brother of Earl Cabell, mayor of Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated.

Ibid.

New York Times articles on Watergate, June 18 to July 2, 1972.

Time magazine, September 8, 1972.

This episode is related in detail in The Invisible Government.

Six Crises.

The Invisible Government.

400,000 Dollars Pour Abattre Kennedy a Paris, Camille Giles, Julliard Press, Paris 1973.

[Lee Forman]

Facinating

http://pics.amres.com/p_asp/ke3242.asp

Photocopy of poster/flier (2-sided) with 2 pics of JFK at top (one straight forward, other side profile). Beneath: "Wanted for TREASON." Goes on to give 7 points why JFK is wanted for treason. Copied from an advertisement insert in the Dallas morning newspaper on Nov 22, 1963. Goes on to say the leaflet had been written in Dallas on Nov. 21st at a Pepsi Cola "convention" by lawyers from the law firm headed up by Richard Nixon. (Nixon had been in Dallas on the 21st at the Pepsi meeting.) Wierd, wierd piece by Northwest Assassination Research Comm.

[Ron Ecker]

This question of when and how Nixon learned of the assasssination is much ado about nothing. What significance should be given to the conflicting stories? The statement that the only time he was in Dallas in 1963 was two days before the assassination is from an FBI report. We all know how reliable FBI reports are. Nixon probably said he arrived in Dallas two days before (true) and the FBI wrote it down like he left town the same day.

In one place Nixon says a man came running from a street corner to his cab in New York to tell him of the shooting, in another place he says a woman came screaming out of her house. So Nixon changed it from some man to a damsel in distress. Nixon saying "Stop the cab!" and rolling down his window to see how he can help a crying lady running out of her house makes Tricky Dick look like Sir Galahad. This proves what we already know, that Nixon was a lying politician who would say whatever sounds good.

As for a meeting at Love Field, maybe Nixon was seen there speaking with Chauncey Holt. Holt could easily be mistaken for Hunt. Nixon probably told Holt, "Secret Service credentials? I don't need no stinking Secret Service credentials. I'm flying out of here, not in."

Ron

Edited March 30, 2005 by Ron Ecker