"Garrison never denied that the Mafia was involved in the [JFK] assassination. The issue [for Garrison] was who planned the crime and whose idea was it and who was in control of it." --Joan Mellen, in a speech about her book, A Farwell to Justice, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 24 January 2006
"In 1975 a Senate committee headed by Frank Church found that the [Central Intelligence] Agency had planned a number of assassination operations, using everything from poison to machine guns and sometimes mob hit men" --Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans, On the Trail of the Assassins
"We now know that the [Central Intelligence] Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation.... Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp." --Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, statement from 2003
"The dalliance between American intelligence and the Mafia had begun in World War II, at a time when anything seemed justifiable if it helped the war effort. In the United States the Office of Naval Intelligence obtained the help of the Mafia's then 'don of dons,' Lucky Luciano, in preventing German sabotage in American dockyards. Through his close associate Meyer Lansky, Luciano mobilized his network of waterfront thugs accordingly and was rewarded by official leniency for his own past crimes." --Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime
"If possible, professional criminals will be hired to carry out specific selective 'jobs' [assassinations]." --Clandestine Operations Manual for Central America, a training manual written by the CIA
"It's called in the intelligence lexicon, 'plausible deniability.' If they [CIA hired guns] perform actions that might embarrass the United States government, they can be denied [as being employed by the government]." --William Leary, Merton Coulter Professor of History and winner of the Central Intelligence Agency's Studies in Intelligence Award, interviewed in the documentary, Air America: The CIA's Secret Airline
"Speaking of the CIA and FBI, Chief Justice Warren said, 'They and all other agencies do employ undercover men who are of terrible character.' Former CIA director Allen Dulles agreed, 'Terribly bad characters,' he said." --Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, citing Warren Commission Executive Session Transcripts, 27 January 1964, p. 163.
"The agency 'deals with everything from bottom feeders around the world to their governments on a routine basis.'" --senior U.S. intelligence official, cited in Time magazine, 3 February 2003
"In late 1960, without the knowledge of President Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA had contacted underworld figures John Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante, offering them $150,000 for Castro's assassination. The gangsters were happy to be hired by the U.S. government to murder the man who had shut down their gambling casinos in Cuba. If they were successful, they hoped a U.S.-sponsored successor to Castro would allow them to reopen the casinos." --James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters
"Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro." --Anthony Summers, journalist and assassination researcher, interviewed by Bill Curtis for the cable TV program, Investigative Reports, September 1991
"One of the Mob's big bases of operations was in Havana before the revolution, and Fidel [Castro] was cutting all that off ... severing the ties with the gambling casinos. The Mob worked shoulder to shoulder with the CIA's Mongoose people [against Castro], to the point that it became almost indistinguishable as to where the CIA activities stopped and Mob activities started." --John Stockwell, former CIA officer, interviewed by Frank Morrow for the TV program, Alternative Views, 1989
"The more we looked into it [the JFK assassination], the most productive area of investigation was clearly the CIA -- namely, those operatives who had worked with the anti-Castro Cubans." --Robert Tanenbaum, former Deputy Counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, interviewed by David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
"The accusations linger. In some minds the suspicions persist of a dark, unsolved conspiracy behind his [JFK's] murder. You can dismiss them, as many of us do, but knowing now what our secret government planned for Castro, the possibility remains: Once we decide that anything goes, anything can come home to haunt us." --Bill Moyers, for the 1987 documentary, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
"...the real danger the CIA has always presented -- unbridled criminal stupidity, cloaked in a blanket of national security." --Gary Webb, Dark Alliance
"After Castro overthrew Batista in January 1959, [Jack] Ruby began to provide weapons, now with CIA support, to anti-Castro Cubans. Ruby was working with another CIA-connected gunrunner, Thomas Eli Davis, III.... He told his first attorney, Tom Howard, that he 'had been involved with Davis, who was a gunrunner entangled in anti-Castro efforts.'" --James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters
"Now they're going to find out about Cuba, they're going to find out about the guns, find out about New Orleans, find out about everything." --Jack Ruby, Oswald's assassin, HSCA Report, vol. IX: V, p. 162. (Ruby made this comment to his former employee, Wally Weston who was visting him in jail.)
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