Who was Pierre Laffite?

[Ron Bulman]

Martino's friendship, closeness with David Morales is interesting.  His later business dealings with Morales after he'd retired, partners in an import-export venture in Mexico/South America.  I'd forgotten this aspect.  I have a 2011 second edition of the 2010 revised edition of SWHT so it's been a dozen years since I read it.  Though it has many pages top corner folded, post it notes sticking up, highlighted passages and underlined sentences maybe my forgetfulness might be forgiven as my memory gets slower.

[Larry Hancock]

Mine does as well Ron, one of the reasons I wrote SWHT was to get all that material in one place rather than scattered thorough tons of pieces of paper - and now I sometimes can't find things I know I put in it...

[Ron Bulman]

"Last and of significance, there was John Martino.  Martino's name is found in several of George Hunter White's address books and in Laffite's notes concerning his trips to Florida and Cuba.  . . . Laffite had known Martino for at least seven years prior to his arrest.  . . .  Laffite, operating under the alias Jean Pierre Martin, visited Martino on at least one occasion in 1961.  This is known only because of a notation made by George Hunter White:  "Pierre to see Martino Cuba - call Rene" [Rene being Pierre's wife]."  From Coup in Dallas, pgs. 106-7. 

Not the source for this but from the end notes.  John Martino:  author Larry Hancock, citing HSCA travel receipts provided by John Martino's wife: He was in New Orleans on September 27, and spoke in various Texas cities on October 1-3, . . .  As Hancock made clear, Martino's sole claim to participation in the JFK assassination was that he acted as a courier, moving money.  Given Martino's travel schedule, it is striking that Pierre Laffite, a long-time acquaintance of Martino's , jotted down in his datebook on September 30, 1963, "Money from Dallas".

"Beginning about 1955, Martino partnered with former CIC and CIA-TSS employee Allan Hughes in his Cuban electronics ventures.  As readers may recall, Hughes was present at the fateful Deep Creek Lake meeting where Frank Olson was dosed with LSD."

To summarize, in 2000 Albarelli asked (J) Gerry Hemming, You met [Allan] Huges in Cuba?  Yeah, I sure did.  What do you remember about Hughes?  Not a whole lot.  He was there in Havana with Martino . . ."

Same reference as above about Pierre to see Martino, GHW notebook, call Rene.

Last three paragraphs/sentence from A Terrible Mistake.

Sources.  Pg. 802.  

Laffite and Cuba: Cirules Enrique, The Mafia in Havana, Ocean Press , New York, 2004, p. 111-118.

Martino/Laffite/White: George Hunter White Papers, Perham Electronics Foundation, Sunnyvale California.  The author, courtesy of foundation manager Ms. Rachel Wager, spent three days reviewing and studying White's papers in 1999.  The papers were subsequently reorganized and transferred to Stanford University (which JFK attended!).

I've read somewhere recently that George Hunter White's wife Albertine donated all of his papers first to a small college or maybe even local library 2-3 years after he passed.  They then went to Perham, then now Stanford.

I have no idea about digital access, but I guess anyone wanting to check Hank's sources on this can go to Stanford and do so.  Not sure where to find the Enrique book, haven't looked.

[Nick Bartetzko]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

"Last and of significance, there was John Martino.  Martino's name is found in several of George Hunter White's address books and in Laffite's notes concerning his trips to Florida and Cuba.  . . . Laffite had known Martino for at least seven years prior to his arrest.  . . .  Laffite, operating under the alias Jean Pierre martin, visited Martino on at least one occasion in 1961.  This is known only because of a notation made by George Hunter White:  "Pierre to see Martino Cuba - call Rene" [Rene being Pierre's wife]."  From Coup in Dallas, pgs. 106-7. 

Not the source for this but from the end notes.  John Martino:  author Larry Hancock, citing HSCA travel receipts provided by John Martino's wife: He was in New Orleans on September 27, and spoke in various Texas cities on October 1-3, . . .  As Hancock made clear, Martino's sole claim to participation in the JFK assassination was that he acted as a courier, moving money.  Given Martino's travel schedule, it is striking that Pierre Laffite, a long-time acquaintance of Martino's , jotted down in his datebook on September 30, 1963, "Money from Dallas".

"Beginning about 1955, Martino partnered with former CIC and CIA-TSS employee Allan Hughes in his Cuban electronics ventures.  As readers may recall, Hughes was present at the fateful Deep Creek Lake meeting where Frank Olson was dosed with LSD."

To summarize, in 2000 Albarelli asked (J) Gerry Hemming, You met [Allan] Huges in Cuba?  Yeah, I sure did.  What do you remember about Hughes?  Not a whole lot.  He was there in Havana with Martino . . ."

Same reference as above about Pierre to see Martino, GHW notebook, call Rene.

Last three paragraphs/sentence from A Terrible Mistake.

Sources.  Pg. 802.  

Laffite and Cuba: Cirules Enrique, The Mafia in Havana, Ocean Press , New York, 2004, p. 111-118.

Martino/Laffite/White: George Hunter White Papers, Perham Electronics Foundation, Sunnyvale California.  The author, courtesy of foundation manager Ms. Rachel Wager, spent three days reviewing and studying White's papers in 1999.  The papers were subsequently reorganized and transferred to Stanford University (which JFK attended!).

I've read somewhere recently that George Hunter White's wife Albertine donated all of his papers first to a small college or maybe even local library 2-3 years after he passed.  They then went to Perham, then now Stanford.

I have no idea about digital access, but I guess anyone wanting to check Hank's sources on this can go to Stanford and do so.  Not sure where to find the Enrique book, haven't looked.

@Ron BulmanThanks for this very interesting thread and it makes me give much more credibility to to the possible involvement of Laffite. The reference to New Orleans and William Reilly are fascinating and so is Albarelli’s communication with Hemming. I’m unclear what book this interview with Hemming is in. Pls advise. It’s been years since I’ve read any JFKA books, but I may need to read one or two more…

Edited January 6 by Nick Bartetzko
be clear my comment is directed to Ron

[Leslie Sharp]

September 20, 1977, NYTimes reporter John Crewdson writes, ' . . . Most of the narcotics agents who worked under Mr. [George Hunter] White in New York and San Francisco while the drug‐testing programs were under way have said that they, too, were unaware of his dual affiliation, though some said they had suspected it.

It appears from the White. diaries that one who may have known something was Jean Pierre Lafitte, a near‐legendary police informant and “special employee” of the narcotics bureau who once was dispatched by Mr. White to Washington to be interviewed by the C.I.A.

Mr. Lafitte, who was instrumental in developing a number of noteworthy criminal cases for the Bureau of Narcotics, the F.B.I. and other Federal agencies, also appears to have played a role in helping Mr. White to establish the $215‐amonth apartment first used by the C.I.A. for the drug experiments in a six‐story red brick building at 81 Bedford Street in a quiet section of Greenwich village.

Mr. Lafitte, a short, chunky man who speaks with a thick French accent, was known to the agents as “the pirate.”

One man who knew Mr. Lafitte 20 years ago recalled that the informant had once described for him in detail the apartment at 81 Bedford Street, including its extensive collection of electronic listening devices, although he did not say whether he knew that it was being used by the C.I.A. for drug testing.

Mr. Lafitte, now living under another name in a New England city that he does not want disclosed, said in an interview that although he had worked closely with Mr. White on a number of important narcotics cases, he had never knowingly spoken with or worked for anyone from the C.I.A. and had never known about the Greenwich Village apartment or the drug tests that were conducted there.'

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/20/archives/abuses-in-testing-of-drugs-by-cia-to-be-panel-focus-senate-panel-to.html

(The following is a second hand account: In 2022, Crewdson was contacted to ask if he might have retained his notes from his conversation with Pierre Lafitte. He indicated that he was fairly certain that file was long gone. He also mentioned (paraphrasing) this story was one of my few regrets. Apparently, for reasons he didn't expound upon, he had failed to follow through with the story.)

Edited January 6 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

19 hours ago, Nick Bartetzko said:

@Ron BulmanThanks for this very interesting thread and it makes me give much more credibility to to the possible involvement of Laffite. The reference to New Orleans and William Reilly are fascinating and so is Albarelli’s communication with Hemming. I’m unclear what book this interview with Hemming is in. Pls advise. It’s been years since I’ve read any JFKA books, but I may need to read one or two more…

Thanks for your comment Nick.  The Hemming part comes from A Terrible Mistake, pg. 436.  Hank went on to ask him, did you actually know or talk to Hughes?  No, I just saw him there, with Martino.

[Nick Bartetzko]

21 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Thanks for your comment Nick.  The Hemming part comes from A Terrible Mistake, pg. 436.  Hank went on to ask him, did you actually know or talk to Hughes?  No, I just saw him there, with Martino.

Thanks, Ron. I may read one or two of the Albarelli books after all….

[Ron Bulman]

On 1/6/2024 at 12:44 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Laffite and Cuba: Cirules Enrique, The Mafia in Havana, Ocean Press , New York, 2004, p. 111-118.

For $7.11 including shipping I couldn't resist.

The Mafia in Havana: A Caribbean Mob Story: Cirules, Enrique: 9780980429237: Amazon.com: Books

The reviews are good overall.  A couple mention a Communist leaning perspective, one questions some sources.  The author was born in Cuba in 1938.

[Ron Bulman]

On 1/6/2024 at 12:40 PM, Leslie Sharp said:

Mr. Lafitte, a short, chunky man who speaks with a thick French accent,

Ha! That's the way Phelan described him, balding with blue eyes, deceptively in ATM.  In ATM it also says he was actually not short or chunky nor balding and dark eyed. 

[Leslie Sharp]

19 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Ha! That's the way Phelan described him, balding with blue eyes, deceptively in ATM.  In ATM it also says he was actually not short or chunky nor balding and dark eyed. 

But his mug shot from the early 1950s reveals a balding guy who doesn't appear particularly trim.  

[Leslie Sharp]

Albarelli provides insight into Lafitte prior to the murder of Frank Olson in this passage,

' . . . Throughout the 1930s, “Pierre Lafitte” often went by the aliases Jean Pierre Mornard and Jean Monard, as well as by Pierre Jean Martin during the time that he was closely aligned with the French Gestapo-like group called the Malice. Lafitte’s surviving personal effects act to support the claim and contain a few French SS badges as well as two Malice identity cards under the name of Martin.

The Malice was established on January 30, 1943, by Pierre Laval, another close associate of Lafitte. Laval had served as Prime Minister of France in 1931 and 1932. Far right in his politics, Laval, after the Germans seized control, served the Vichy government as vice president of its Council of Ministers and then as head of the government. When France was liberated in 1944, the government of General Charles de Gaulle had him arrested for treason. He was tried and sentenced to death. After attempting suicide, Laval was executed by firing squad.

Laval put La Cagoule member and Vichy Secretary General Joseph Darnand, yet another Lafitte associate, in charge of the Malice. Darnand (sometimes mistakenly spelled “Danard”) was a thirty-seven-year-old former World War I French army officer and a transportation company director. When World War II began, he again joined the French army and soon founded a Vichy anti-Resistance militia. In August 1943, Darnand became an officer in the Nazi SS because he was disgusted with the Vichy authorities after they refused to arm his Malice soldiers who had all been targeted by the Resistance for assassination.

French Sûreté Commissioner Jean Belin also revealed that SS Otto Skorzeny played an earlier role in Vichy affairs. Belin writes that in September 1940, he “was personally instructed by the Minister of the Interior [Vichy government] to proceed to the Chateau de Chateldon with a strong force of police and a whole battalion of cyclists.” Belin states, “There was a strong belief that the Nazis were about to kidnap Pierre Laval and remove him by air, just as they had rescued Mussolini after the invasion of Italy.” Commissioner Belin had firm orders that any brazen Skorzeny-type action to snatch Laval be prevented. Belin further stated that within twenty-four hours of going to the Chateau, “the German Ambassador to Vichy France, Otto Abetz, had arrived in the provisional capital, accompanied by a force of SS men armed with machine guns.”

Belin explained: “At first Marshall Petain had apparently refused to see Hitler’s envoy but later relented. He had, however, persisted that Laval remain under house arrest. Abetz lost his temper and declared that he would liberate the Vice-Premiere by force, only to be told that, if he attempted any such thing, his men would be fired on as they approached the Chateau.” Belin soon returned Laval to Vichy, and Skorzeny apparently was never called on to assist Ambassador Abetz.

In time, Joseph Darnand put. Filliol in charge of the Limoges [city in southwestern-central France] branch of the Malice. The blithe psychopath Filliol quickly developed whole new dimensions to his homicidal psyche, not the least of which were enhanced interrogation techniques featuring brutal torture and the drugging of subjects. Historians Brunelle and Finley-Croswhite inform us that Filliol and his mistress, Alice Lamy, a name that surfaces in Lafitte’s datebook, interrogated and tortured over one hundred people in one day alone at an abandoned movie theatre called the Palace in Périgueux, France. This extraordinary act of sustained torture would pale in consideration of Filliol’s next horrific act, the destruction of the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in Limousin (France). There the Nazis, with Filliol’s close assistance, murdered over six hundred people, including two hundred children.

Pierre Lafitte would also cross paths with Filliol—who like Lafitte would use at least twenty aliases—when in 1944 he was associated with the SS Waffen Charlemagne Division, a French unit aiding the Nazis in their occupation of France. It is reported by surviving members of Lafitte’s family that he was with the SS Brigadefuhrer Krukenenberg in April 1945, just prior to its being moved to Berlin to defend Hitler in his final bunker days, but independent confirmation of this remains elusive. There is no evidence that Lafitte was ever captured, let alone brought to trial; however, at the end of World War II, Filliol was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. His sentence was never carried out because he escaped to Spain and fascist dictator General Francisco Franco refused to extradite the killer.

Once in Spain, Filliol soon established contact with Nazi Otto Skorzeny who had been “re-settled” for the benefit of US intelligence interests in the country’s capital. . . . '

Edited January 10 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Leslie Sharp said:

But his mug shot from the early 1950s reveals a balding guy who doesn't appear particularly trim.  

I didn't know about a mug shot.  That's interesting, it would be cool to see.  What I posted was a summary of Hank's words.  A fuller quote.

"Out of respect for Pierre's privacy, Phelan always described him in general, and somewhat deceptive terms. "He was a short, bald man with cold blue eyes and a French or Italian accent."  (Laffite was not short, had a full head of hair, and had dark eyes).

[Leslie Sharp]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

I didn't know about a mug shot.  That's interesting, it would be cool to see.  What I posted was a summary of Hank's words.  A fuller quote.

"Out of respect for Pierre's privacy, Phelan always described him in general, and somewhat deceptive terms. "He was a short, bald man with cold blue eyes and a French or Italian accent."  (Laffite was not short, had a full head of hair, and had dark eyes).

Right, and I was only confirming that Lafitte was a master of disguise. I've attempted to link the photo but it exceeds my EF limit.

Edited January 10 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

An interesting story from ATM I think Leslie alluded to recently, but I can't find her post.  Maybe she will (hopefully) correct me here.  Given her last post about Pierre's WWII and before affiliations we should note this.

"While there is no evidence Laffite played any role in Hughes' doings, Lansky and Maheu's operations are a different story. . . . "on occasion brokered Lansky's international drug deals, and also worked on occasion for Maheu' private investigation firm . . ." 

After the demise of Frank Olson, Pierre took a several week vacation at a remote location in Florida possibly owned by Santos Trafficante.  Shortly after his return to NYC, he went to Vegas.

Hank Greenspun, owner and editor of the Las Vegas Sun was not a friend of Sheriff Glen Jones.  Jones was on the take, had an interest in the Roxie's bordello, they pursued others but not it.  Hank wrote about it.  Jones sued for a million plus defamation.  He was well hooked up with politicians and Judges, Hank (Greenspun) knew this. 

Talking to his new reporter Ed Reid, of NYC, who knew George White and Pierre, Reid recommended Laffite to entrap Jones.  Laffite later said George and Reid didn't know where he was and Maheu connected them as he was on assignment for Maheu.

Greenspun hired Laffite, who came in to pose as shady businessman Louis Tabet proposing to buy Roxie's. All well documented, Jones and the owners of Roxie's busted shortly after Pierre left town, his name never mentioned.    

[Leslie Sharp]

5 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

An interesting story from ATM I think Leslie alluded to recently, but I can't find her post.  Maybe she will (hopefully) correct me here.  Given her last post about Pierre's WWII and before affiliations we should note this.

"While there is no evidence Laffite played any role in Hughes' doings, Lansky and Maheu's operations are a different story. . . . "on occasion brokered Lansky's international drug deals, and also worked on occasion for Maheu' private investigation firm . . ." 

After the demise of Frank Olson, Pierre took a several week vacation at a remote location in Florida possibly owned by Santos Trafficante.  Shortly after his return to NYC, he went to Vegas.

Hank Greenspun, owner and editor of the Las Vegas Sun was not a friend of Sheriff Glen Jones.  Jones was on the take, had an interest in the Roxie's bordello, they pursued others but not it.  Hank wrote about it.  Jones sued for a million plus defamation.  He was well hooked up with politicians and Judges, Hank (Greenspun) knew this. 

Talking to his new reporter Ed Reid, of NYC, who knew George White and Pierre, Reid recommended Laffite to entrap Jones.  Laffite later said George and Reid didn't know where he was and Maheu connected them as he was on assignment for Maheu.

Greenspun hired Laffite, who came in to pose as shady businessman Louis Tabet proposing to buy Roxie's. All well documented, Jones and the owners of Roxie's busted shortly after Pierre left town, his name never mentioned.    

The Greenspun story is very interesting.  I believe Phelan and Lafitte recount it in a series published in True, The Man's Magazine.  The links may still be active on the net. I'll check.