Robert Francis Kennedy was the most dangerous man in Washington. Not because he was Attorney General. Not because he was the President's brother. Because he believed.
He believed in the law. He believed in justice. He believed that the same rules applied to everyone—to Teamsters bosses and Cosa Nostra dons, to Cuban exiles and American spies. This made him, in the estimation of men who understood how the world actually worked, either a saint or a fool.
The file that follows was compiled from four separate surveillance operations, none of which knew the others existed. Reading them together reveals a geometry that no single agency ever saw—or admitted to seeing.
Date: 4 October 1962
Chair: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Present: Gen. Lansdale, William Harvey, McGeorge Bundy, Gen. Taylor
AG opened meeting by expressing "profound dissatisfaction" with pace of Cuban operations. Stated the President considers removal of Castro regime "top priority of the United States Government." Demanded "new ideas, more aggressive action."
AG: "We have the resources of the greatest nation on earth. I want to know why we can't get rid of one bearded revolutionary on an island ninety miles from Florida."
Harvey noted that "certain executive action capabilities" remain in development. AG interrupted: "I don't want to hear about capabilities. I want results."
[NOTE: AG departed at 1630 for DOJ meeting on Organized Crime prosecution schedule]
The young Attorney General drove himself. No motorcade for the morning commute. Just Bobby in a convertible, sleeves rolled, jaw set, ready to remake America before lunch. He had two obsessions: Cuba and the Mob. He did not yet understand that they were the same obsession.
Subject: Sam Giancana (TOP HOODLUM)
Location: Armory Lounge, Forest Park, IL
Date: 17 August 1962
GIANCANA: ...little son of a bitch. His father came to me. Came to ME. Chicago, West Virginia. We delivered. UM1: And now the kid's got his dogs on us. GIANCANA: Every week another subpoena. Hoffa, Marcello, Trafficante. They're squeezing everyone. UM1: What about your friends? The government friends? GIANCANA: [LAUGHS] That's the beautiful part. They still need us. The Cuba thing. They come to my hotel room, these Ivy League cocksuckers, and they ask me to help kill a communist. Meanwhile, the Attorney General—the President's own brother—is trying to put me in Marion. UM1: The left hand and the right hand. GIANCANA: The left hand doesn't know. That's the thing. Bobby doesn't know. And nobody's gonna tell him. Because if he finds out about the operation, he finds out about the girl. And if he finds out about the girl... [LAUGHTER] GIANCANA: We own these people. They just don't know it yet.
[TRANSCRIPT ROUTED TO SAC CHICAGO. COPY TO DIRECTOR. NOT FORWARDED TO DOJ PER STANDING INSTRUCTION.]
Hoover knew. Hoover always knew. He collected secrets the way other men collected stamps—for the pleasure of ownership, for the insurance of leverage. The Director had files on Jack Kennedy's women. He had files on the CIA-Mafia operation. He had files on Judith Campbell Exner, who was sleeping with the President and the Chicago Mob boss simultaneously, a living link between the White House and the Outfit.
He told no one. He simply... waited.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
Subject: Project ZRRIFLE / Coordination with GPFLOOR Assets
Date: 14 September 1962
From: Sheffield Edwards, Director of Security
1. Contact with GPFLOOR-1 (Roselli) maintained through Robert Maheu cutout. Asset continues to express willingness to support KUBARK objectives in Caribbean target area.
2. GPFLOOR-3 (Trafficante) has provided introduction to Cuban exile network with access to target. Asset motivations include recovery of Havana gaming interests seized by revolutionary government. Estimated losses: $25-30 million.
3. COMPLICATION: Department of Justice Organized Crime Section has active investigations targeting all three GPFLOOR assets. AG Kennedy personally directing prosecution strategy.
4. RECOMMENDATION: Compartmentation must be absolute. Under no circumstances should AG or DOJ be briefed on GPFLOOR relationship. Exposure would compromise sources, methods, and create unacceptable political liability for DCI and White House.
5. NOTE: Harvey has expressed concern that GPFLOOR assets may be "playing both ends." Their cooperation with KUBARK provides implicit immunity from DOJ prosecution. Assets are aware of this leverage.
[ORIGINAL FILED DIRECTOR'S SAFE. NO COPIES. NO REGISTRY.]
The geometry was perfect in its ugliness. Bobby Kennedy was the most aggressive Cuba hawk in the administration, demanding results, demanding action, asking why the full resources of the American government couldn't eliminate one man. He didn't know that the CIA's best assets for the job were the same mobsters he was prosecuting—men who had their own reasons for wanting the Kennedys neutralized.
The Agency was using the Mafia to kill Castro. The Attorney General was trying to destroy the Mafia. And the Mafia was keeping notes.
Location: Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach, FL
Date: 3 November 1962
Subjects: Johnny Roselli, Santos Trafficante Jr.
ROSELLI: The pills didn't work. The cigars didn't work. The diving suit—don't even ask about the fucking diving suit. TRAFFICANTE: Maybe it's not supposed to work. ROSELLI: What do you mean? TRAFFICANTE: I mean maybe they don't really want him dead. Maybe they just want us on the hook. Doing their dirty work, keeping our mouths shut, while the kid brother puts our friends in prison. ROSELLI: That's a dark way to think, Santo. TRAFFICANTE: [PAUSE] You know what Carlos said to me last week? He said, "If you cut off a dog's head, the tail dies too." He wasn't talking about Havana, Johnny. He was talking about Washington. ROSELLI: Jesus Christ. TRAFFICANTE: I'm just telling you what he said. Marcello's got a long memory. And he doesn't forget who deported him to Guatemala in a federal agent's trunk. [LONG SILENCE] ROSELLI: So what happens now? TRAFFICANTE: Now? Nothing. We wait. These things... they take care of themselves. One way or another.
[TAPE REMOVED FROM FBI VAULT 1978. CURRENT LOCATION: UNKNOWN.]
Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans boss—the man Bobby Kennedy had literally kidnapped and dumped in Guatemala without a trial, without a hearing, just federal agents and a plane and Central American jungle. Marcello walked back across the border two months later. He didn't file a lawsuit. He didn't write letters to Congress.
He waited.
They were all waiting.
In his Justice Department office, Robert Kennedy worked eighteen-hour days. He had photographs of his children on the desk. He had a mounted sailfish on the wall. He had no idea that the operation he was pushing hardest—the elimination of Castro—was controlled by men who were simultaneously plotting to eliminate his brother.
Or perhaps he suspected. Perhaps, late at night, the pattern flickered at the edge of his vision—the Mob, the Agency, the Cubans, the money, all flowing through channels he couldn't quite trace. Perhaps he pushed harder on Mongoose precisely because he sensed that something was wrong, that control was slipping, that there were doors in his own government that wouldn't open for him.
The file doesn't say. The file only shows what the microphones heard and the cameras saw. It doesn't show what a man knew in his gut and couldn't prove.
What the file does show is this: by November 1962, five separate parties wanted the Kennedys neutralized. The CIA old guard, humiliated and purged. The Mafia, prosecuted and persecuted. The Cuban exiles, betrayed at the Bay of Pigs. The Texas oil money, threatened by the depletion allowance. And somewhere in the shadows, a coalition was forming—not in a single room, not with a single plan, but in the way that water finds cracks in stone.
All they needed was someone to pull the trigger. Someone disposable. Someone who thought he was acting alone.
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